tle,
began to think he ought to be transported with joy.

'But I'm behind the time, you understand,' he observed in apology,
passing his hand nervously down the whole row of bright buttons on his
coat, and then up again, as if they were beads and he were telling
them twice over: 'and I would rather have my dear boy here. It's
an old-fashioned notion, I daresay. He was always fond of the sea
He's'--and he looked wistfully at Walter--'he's glad to go.'

'Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, quickly, 'if you say that, I won't go. No,
Captain Cuttle, I won't. If my Uncle thinks I could be glad to leave
him, though I was going to be made Governor of all the Islands in the
West Indies, that's enough. I'm a fixture.'

'Wal'r, my lad,' said the Captain. 'Steady! Sol Gills, take an
observation of your nevy.

Following with his eyes the majestic action of the Captain's hook, the
old man looked at Walter.

'Here is a certain craft,' said the Captain, with a magnificent sense of
the allegory into which he was soaring, 'a-going to put out on a certain
voyage. What name is wrote upon that craft indelibly? Is it The Gay?
or,' said the Captain, raising his voice as much as to say, observe the
point of this, 'is it The Gills?'

'Ned,' said the old man, drawing Walter to his side, and taking his
arm tenderly through his, 'I know. I know. Of course I know that Wally
considers me more than himself always. That's in my mind. When I say
he is glad to go, I mean I hope he is. Eh? look you, Ned and you too,
Wally, my dear, this is new and unexpected to me; and I'm afraid my
being behind the time, and poor, is at the bottom of it. Is it really
good fortune for him, do you tell me, now?' said the old man, looking
anxiously from one to the other. 'Really and truly? Is it? I can
reconcile myself to almost anything that advances Wally, but I won't
have Wally putting himself at any disadvantage for me, or keeping
anything from me. You, Ned Cuttle!' said the old man, fastening on the
Captain, to the manifest confusion of that diplomatist; 'are you dealing
plainly by your old friend? Speak out, Ned Cuttle. Is there anything
behind? Ought he to go? How do you know it first, and why?'

As it was a contest of affection and self-denial, Walter struck in
with infinite effect, to the Captain's relief; and between them they
tolerably reconciled old Sol Gills, by continued talking, to the
project; or rather so confused him, that nothing, not even the pain of
se