“And now I am come to ask your advice upon all these matters;” the captain immediately replied, in his warm, off-hand manner—
“I am afraid you won’t find my advice of much importance; but I offer you my active co-operation in anything you think ought to be done or can be done in this affair, which, I assure you deeply interests me, and gives me the greatest possible impulse to exertion. You have but to command me in the matter, and I am completely at your disposal.”
“I was quite certain you would say as much. But, notwithstanding the manner in which you shrink from giving an opinion, I am anxious to know what you really think with regard to what are, you will allow, most extraordinary circumstances.”
“The most natural thing in the world,” said Captain Rathbone, “at the first flush of th
