'Come!' said the Captain, unspeakably encouraged, 'what do you say? Am I
right or wrong?'

So much had the Captain expressed in his eye, emboldened and incited
by Mr Carker's smiling urbanity, that he felt himself in as fair a
condition to put the question, as if he had expressed his sentiments
with the utmost elaboration.

'Right,' said Mr Carker, 'I have no doubt.'

'Out'ard bound with fair weather, then, I say,' cried Captain Cuttle.

Mr Carker smiled assent.

'Wind right astarn, and plenty of it,' pursued the Captain.

Mr Carker smiled assent again.

'Ay, ay!' said Captain Cuttle, greatly relieved and pleased. 'I know'd
how she headed, well enough; I told Wal'r so. Thank'ee, thank'ee.'

'Gay has brilliant prospects,' observed Mr Carker, stretching his mouth
wider yet: 'all the world before him.'

'All the world and his wife too, as the saying is,' returned the
delighted Captain.

At the word 'wife' (which he had uttered without design), the Captain
stopped, cocked his eye again, and putting the glazed hat on the top
of the knobby stick, gave it a twirl, and looked sideways at his always
smiling friend.

'I'd bet a gill of old Jamaica,' said the Captain, eyeing him
attentively, 'that I know what you're a smiling at.'

Mr Carker took his cue, and smiled the more.

'It goes no farther?' said the Captain, making a poke at the door with
the knobby stick to assure himself that it was shut.

'Not an inch,' said Mr Carker.

'You're thinking of a capital F perhaps?' said the Captain.

Mr Carker didn't deny it.

'Anything about a L,' said the Captain, 'or a O?'

Mr Carker still smiled.

'Am I right, again?' inquired the Captain in a whisper, with the scarlet
circle on his forehead swelling in his triumphant joy.

Mr Carker, in reply, still smiling, and now nodding assent, Captain
Cuttle rose and squeezed him by the hand, assuring him, warmly, that
they were on the same tack, and that as for him (Cuttle) he had laid his
course that way all along. 'He know'd her first,' said the Captain, with
all the secrecy and gravity that the subject demanded, 'in an uncommon
manner--you remember his finding her in the street when she was a'most
a babby--he has liked her ever since, and she him, as much as two
youngsters can. We've always said, Sol Gills and me, that they was cut
out for each other.'

A cat, or a monkey, or a hyena, or a death's-head, could not have shown
the Captain more teeth at one time, than