credit of that Company in this country. Sedative announcements were
issued by the Directors in London; brilliant accounts of the Company's
affairs abroad were published; proof incontrovertible was given that the
B. B. C. was never in so flourishing a state as at that time when Hobson
Brothers had refused its drafts; there could be no question that the
Company had received a severe wound and was deeply if not vitally
injured by the conduct of the London firm.

The propensity to sell out became quite epidemic amongst the
shareholders. Everybody was anxious to realise. Why, out of the thirty
names inscribed on poor Mrs. Clive's cocoa-nut tree no less than twenty
deserters might be mentioned, or at least who would desert could they
find an opportunity of doing so with arms and baggage. Wrathfully the
good Colonel scratched the names of those faithless ones out of his
daughter's visiting-book: haughtily he met them in the street; to desert
the B. B. C. at the hour of peril was, in his idea, like applying for
leave of absence on the eve of an action. He would not see that the
question was not one of sentiment at all, but of chances and arithmetic;
he would not hear with patience of men quitting the ship, as he called
it. "They may go, sir," says he, "but let them never more be officers of
mine." With scorn and indignation he paid off one or two timid friends,
who were anxious to fly, and purchased their shares out of his own
pocket. But his purse was not long enough for this kind of amusement.
What money he had was invested in the Company already, and his name
further pledged for meeting the engagements from which their late London
bankers had withdrawn.

Those gentlemen, in the meanwhile, spoke of their differences with
the Indian Bank as quite natural, and laughed at the absurd charges of
personal hostility which poor Thomas Newcome publicly preferred. "Here
is a hot-headed old Indian dragoon," says Sir Barnes, "who knows no more
about business than I do about cavalry tactics or Hindostanee; who gets
into a partnership along with other dragoons and Indian wiseacres,
with some uncommonly wily old native practitioners; and they pay great
dividends, and they set up a bank. Of course we will do these people's
business as long as we are covered, but I have always told their manager
that we would run no risks whatever, and close the account the very
moment it did not suit us to keep it: and so we parted company six weeks
ago, s