forth at all on Sundays; and both within and without the walls of his
retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging lions.

The Captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon by
Mrs MacStinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer resistance.
He felt that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his mind's eye,
put meekly in a hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodgings. He
foresaw that, once immured there, he was a lost man: his hat gone; Mrs
MacStinger watchful of him day and night; reproaches heaped upon his
head, before the infant family; himself the guilty object of suspicion
and distrust; an ogre in the children's eyes, and in their mother's a
detected traitor.

A violent perspiration, and a lowness of spirits, always came over the
Captain as this gloomy picture presented itself to his imagination. It
generally did so previous to his stealing out of doors at night for air
and exercise. Sensible of the risk he ran, the Captain took leave of
Rob, at those times, with the solemnity which became a man who might
never return: exhorting him, in the event of his (the Captain's) being
lost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue, and keep the
brazen instruments well polished.

But not to throw away a chance; and to secure to himself a means, in
case of the worst, of holding communication with the external world;
Captain Cuttle soon conceived the happy idea of teaching Rob the Grinder
some secret signal, by which that adherent might make his presence and
fidelity known to his commander, in the hour of adversity. After much
cogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing him to
whistle the marine melody, 'Oh cheerily, cheerily!' and Rob the Grinder
attaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as a
landsman could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these mysterious
instructions on his mind:

'Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took--'

'Took, Captain!' interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open.

'Ah!' said Captain Cuttle darkly, 'if ever I goes away, meaning to come
back to supper, and don't come within hail again, twenty-four hours
arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle that 'ere tune near my
old moorings--not as if you was a meaning of it, you understand, but as
if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in that tune, you sheer
off, my lad, and come back four-and-twenty hours arterwards; if I answer
in another tun