replied the Captain, 'right!' The Captain's manner
expressed a warm approval of Mr Carker's quickness of perception. 'I'm a
intimate friend of his and his Uncle's. Perhaps,' said the Captain, 'you
may have heard your head Governor mention my name?--Captain Cuttle.'

'No!' said Mr Carker, with a still wider demonstration than before.

'Well,' resumed the Captain, 'I've the pleasure of his acquaintance.
I waited upon him down on the Sussex coast there, with my young friend
Wal'r, when--in short, when there was a little accommodation wanted.'
The Captain nodded his head in a manner that was at once comfortable,
easy, and expressive. 'You remember, I daresay?'

'I think,' said Mr Carker, 'I had the honour of arranging the business.'

'To be sure!' returned the Captain. 'Right again! you had. Now I've took
the liberty of coming here--

'Won't you sit down?' said Mr Carker, smiling.

'Thank'ee,' returned the Captain, availing himself of the offer. 'A man
does get more way upon himself, perhaps, in his conversation, when he
sits down. Won't you take a cheer yourself?'

'No thank you,' said the Manager, standing, perhaps from the force of
winter habit, with his back against the chimney-piece, and looking down
upon the Captain with an eye in every tooth and gum. 'You have taken the
liberty, you were going to say--though it's none--'

'Thank'ee kindly, my lad,' returned the Captain: 'of coming here, on
account of my friend Wal'r. Sol Gills, his Uncle, is a man of science,
and in science he may be considered a clipper; but he ain't what I
should altogether call a able seaman--not man of practice. Wal'r is as
trim a lad as ever stepped; but he's a little down by the head in one
respect, and that is, modesty. Now what I should wish to put to
you,' said the Captain, lowering his voice, and speaking in a kind of
confidential growl, 'in a friendly way, entirely between you and me, and
for my own private reckoning, 'till your head Governor has wore round a
bit, and I can come alongside of him, is this--Is everything right and
comfortable here, and is Wal'r out'ard bound with a pretty fair wind?'

'What do you think now, Captain Cuttle?' returned Carker, gathering up
his skirts and settling himself in his position. 'You are a practical
man; what do you think?'

The acuteness and the significance of the Captain's eye as he cocked
it in reply, no words short of those unutterable Chinese words before
referred to could describe.