e house. Come along in now, my boy.
I'll give Jane a hail to let her know we're here in harbour, so that
she can pipe down to dinner. Hi--hullo--on deck there!" and, raising
his voice, in this concluding shout--just as if he were standing on the
poop of a vessel in a heavy gale of wind and hailing a look-out man on
the fore-crosstrees--he opened the door of the cottage, motioning me
courteously to enter it first.

CHAPTER TEN.

A WELCOME GUEST.

The little hall, or passage way, opening out of the porch, in which I
now found myself, was like the vestibule to a museum.

It was crammed full, from floor to ceiling, with all sorts of curios,
brought from foreign parts, evidently by the worthy owner of the
dwelling, when returning home after his many cruisings in strange
waters--conch shells from the Congo and cowries from Zanzibar; a
swordfish's broken spear from the Pacific, and a Fijian war-club; cases
of stuffed humming-birds from Rio, and calabashes from the Caribbean
Sea; a beautiful model, in the finest ivory work, of a Chinese junk on
one side, _vis-a-vis_ with a full-rigged English man-of-war on the
other; and, above all, in the place of honour, the hideous body of a
shark, displaying its systematic rows of triangularly arranged saw-like
teeth, now harmless, but once ready to mangle the unwary!

All these objects, of course, immediately attracted my attention, but I
had not much time for glancing round the collection; for, almost as soon
as we got inside the little hall, a bright-faced middle-aged woman, with
jet-black hair and eyes, the very image of my new friend, only much more
comely in feature, stepped forward from a room opening out of the other
end of the passage.

"Dear me, Sam, is that you?" she cried out in a voice closely resembling
his in its cheery accents, although more musical by reason of its
feminine ring; "I'm just dishing up, and dinner'll be ready as soon as
the pasty's done."

Her brother did not apparently pay any attention to this highly
important announcement for the moment.

"Come here, Jane," he said, "I've brought home a visitor."

With this she advanced, courtesying, her face changing as soon as she
came nearer and saw who the stranger was.

"My, Sam!" she exclaimed, "who is he? Why, he's the very image of poor
Ted!" and she raised the corner of her apron to her eyes as she spoke,
as if to stop the ready-starting tears.

"Whoever do you think he is?" said Sam Pengelly,