the ship's company were
saved.

The Guardian-Mother returned to New York after this successful voyage,
though not till Captain Ringgold had obtained a strong hint that Scoble had
a wife in England. The educational scheme of the commander was then fully
considered, and it was decided to make a voyage around the world in the
Guardian-Mother. She was duly prepared for the purpose by Captain Ringgold.
A ship's company of the highest grade was obtained. The last to be shipped
was W. Penn Sharp as a quartermaster, the only vacancy on board. He had
been a skilful detective most of his life, and failing health alone
compelled him to go to sea; and he had been a sailor in his early years,
attaining the position of first officer of a large Indiaman.

The captain made him third officer at Bermuda, the better to have his
services as a detective. He had investigated Scoble's record, and
eventually found Mrs. Scoble in Cuba, where she had inherited the large
fortune of an uncle whom she had nursed in his last sickness. Scoble had
come into the possession of the wealth of a brother who had recently died
in Bermuda. He had purchased a steam-yacht of four hundred tons, in which
he had followed the Guardian-Mother, and had several times attempted to
sink her in collisions.

Officers came to Cuba to arrest him for his crimes at the races, and he was
sent to the scene of his villany, where the court sentenced him to Sing
Sing for a long term. The court in Cuba decreed that his yacht belonged to
his wife; and her new owner, at the suggestion of the commander of the
Guardian-Mother, made Penn Sharp, to whom she was largely indebted for the
fortune to which she had succeeded, the captain of her. The steam-yacht was
the Viking, and Mrs. Scoble sailed in her to New York, and then to England,
where she obtained a divorce from her recreant husband, and became the wife
of Captain Sharp, who was now in command of the Blanche, the white steamer
that sailed abreast of the Guardian-Mother when the wreck in the Arabian
Sea was discovered.

From a sailing-yacht sunk in a squall in the harbor of New York, the crew
of the steamer had saved two gentlemen. One was a celebrated physician and
surgeon, suffering from overwork, Dr. Philip Hawkes. He was induced to
accept the commander's offer of a passage around the world for his services
as the surgeon of the ship. His companion was a learned Frenchman,
afflicted in the same manner as his friend; and he bec