e, do you stand off and on, and wait till I throw out
further signals. Do you understand them orders, now?'

'What am I to stand off and on of, Captain?' inquired Rob. 'The
horse-road?'

'Here's a smart lad for you!' cried the Captain eyeing him sternly, 'as
don't know his own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back again
alternate--d'ye understand that?'

'Yes, Captain,' said Rob.

'Very good my lad, then,' said the Captain, relenting. 'Do it!'

That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle sometimes condescended,
of an evening after the shop was shut, to rehearse this scene:
retiring into the parlour for the purpose, as into the lodgings of a
supposititious MacStinger, and carefully observing the behaviour of his
ally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinder
discharged himself of his duty with so much exactness and judgment, when
thus put to the proof, that the Captain presented him, at divers times,
with seven sixpences, in token of satisfaction; and gradually felt
stealing over his spirit the resignation of a man who had made provision
for the worst, and taken every reasonable precaution against an
unrelenting fate.

Nevertheless, the Captain did not tempt ill-fortune, by being a whit
more venturesome than before. Though he considered it a point of good
breeding in himself, as a general friend of the family, to attend Mr
Dombey's wedding (of which he had heard from Mr Perch), and to show that
gentleman a pleasant and approving countenance from the gallery, he had
repaired to the church in a hackney cabriolet with both windows up;
and might have scrupled even to make that venture, in his dread of
Mrs MacStinger, but that the lady's attendance on the ministry of the
Reverend Melchisedech rendered it peculiarly unlikely that she would be
found in communion with the Establishment.

The Captain got safe home again, and fell into the ordinary routine of
his new life, without encountering any more direct alarm from the enemy,
than was suggested to him by the daily bonnets in the street. But other
subjects began to lay heavy on the Captain's mind. Walter's ship was
still unheard of. No news came of old Sol Gills. Florence did not even
know of the old man's disappearance, and Captain Cuttle had not the
heart to tell her. Indeed the Captain, as his own hopes of the generous,
handsome, gallant-hearted youth, whom he had loved, according to his
rough manner, from a child, began to fade, and