bout to
address the lady, when her husband informed me that `She no speak
English--and, as she is very tired, she wishes at once to go to her
cabin.'

"I accordingly conducted the veiled lady below. From her figure, and a
glimpse I caught of her countenance as the light from the lamp fell on
it (as by chance, of course, her veil fell on one side), I saw that she
was young and undoubtedly pretty, thus accounting for the jealousy
displayed by her `lord and master.'

"The old gentleman followed and remained for a short time in the cabin.
When he came out I observed that he examined the door, and seemed rather
nonplussed on discovering that there was no key with which he could
follow his usual custom of locking up his better half. I invited him to
walk the deck with me, that he might give me a fuller account of the
circumstances which had occurred at Angostura, requiring the visit of a
British man-of-war.

"He told me a long rigmarole tale of an attack which had been made on
his house by a party of brigands, as he called them, from Venezuela, the
chief object of which, as he suspected, was to carry off his wife;
however, they, or some one else, had pulled down the consular flagstaff.
A half-caste, who claimed to be a British subject, belonging to
Trinidad, had been killed, and two or three others had been made
prisoners. All the time he was speaking he was in a state of agitation,
and soon hurried back into the cabin, to ascertain (as he said), whether
his wife wanted anything.

"He supped with us in the gunroom, and though he played a very good
knife and fork, he exhibited the same uneasiness, jumping up two or
three times during the meal, to pay his spouse a visit.

"McTavish, who had not suspected the cause of his anxiety, remarked,
`that he had never seen more devoted affection displayed, and that he
could not help admiring the old gentleman,' though he owned that he
possessed very few other likeable qualities.

"For my own part, I did not anticipate much pleasure in the society of
my guests.

"By break of day we got under weigh and stood for the `Boca de Huevos,'
or the Umbrella Passage. Till I consulted our sailing directions I had
fancied that we might have made a short cut to the southward through one
of the Serpent's Mouths, but the hot current which sets into the Gulf of
Paria, caused by the immense mass of water flowing out of the Orinoco,
would have effectually prevented us from gaining our object.