r Toots.

The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows,
from the Shipping Intelligence:

'"Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in
this port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports
that being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica,
in"--in such and such a latitude, you know,' said Mr Toots, after making
a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them.

'Ay!' cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. 'Heave
ahead, my lad!'

'--latitude,' repeated Mr Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain,
'and longitude so-and-so,--"the look-out observed, half an hour before
sunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of a
mile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was
hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to
consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an
English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portion
of the stem on which the words and letters 'Son and H-' were yet plainly
legible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon the floating
fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze springing up in
the night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no doubt that all
surmises as to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son and Heir, port of
London, bound for Barbados, are now set at rest for ever; that she broke
up in the last hurricane; and that every soul on board perished."'

Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived
within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. During
the reading of the paragraph, and for a minute or two afterwards, he sat
with his gaze fixed on the modest Mr Toots, like a man entranced; then,
suddenly rising, and putting on his glazed hat, which, in his visitor's
honour, he had laid upon the table, the Captain turned his back, and
bent his head down on the little chimneypiece.

'Oh' upon my word and honour,' cried Mr Toots, whose tender heart was
moved by the Captain's unexpected distress, 'this is a most wretched
sort of affair this world is! Somebody's always dying, or going and
doing something uncomfortable in it. I'm sure I never should have looked
forward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. I
never saw such a world. It's a great deal worse than Blimber's.'

Captain Cuttle, without alteri