my opinion is he won't come back no more. If so be as he's alive, my
opinion is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearings
of this obserwation lays in the application on it.'

'Bunsby!' said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to have estimated the
value of his distinguished friend's opinions in proportion to the
immensity of the difficulty he experienced in making anything out of
them; 'Bunsby,' said the Captain, quite confounded by admiration, 'you
carry a weight of mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage soon. But
in regard o' this here will, I don't mean to take no steps towards the
property--Lord forbid!--except to keep it for a more rightful owner; and
I hope yet as the rightful owner, Sol Gills, is living and'll come back,
strange as it is that he ain't forwarded no dispatches. Now, what is
your opinion, Bunsby, as to stowing of these here papers away again, and
marking outside as they was opened, such a day, in the presence of John
Bunsby and Ed'ard Cuttle?'

Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Greenland or elsewhere,
to this proposal, it was carried into execution; and that great man,
bringing his eye into the present for a moment, affixed his sign-manual
to the cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, from
the use of capital letters. Captain Cuttle, having attached his own
left-handed signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe,
entreated his guest to mix another glass and smoke another pipe; and
doing the like himself, fell a musing over the fire on the possible
fortunes of the poor old Instrument-maker.

And now a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that Captain
Cuttle, unsupported by the presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneath
it, and been a lost man from that fatal hour.

How the Captain, even in the satisfaction of admitting such a guest,
could have only shut the door, and not locked it, of which negligence
he was undoubtedly guilty, is one of those questions that must for ever
remain mere points of speculation, or vague charges against destiny.
But by that unlocked door, at this quiet moment, did the fell MacStinger
dash into the parlour, bringing Alexander MacStinger in her parental
arms, and confusion and vengeance (not to mention Juliana MacStinger,
and the sweet child's brother, Charles MacStinger, popularly known about
the scenes of his youthful sports, as Chowley) in her train. She came
so swiftly and so silently, like a rushin