`Aye, aye, my lad, I won't detain him longer than a minute,' said the Captain, nodding with all the weighty importance that he felt within him. Perch, soon returning, said, `Will Captain Cuttle walk this way?'

Mr. Carker the Manager, standing on the hearth-rug before the empty fireplace, which was ornamented with a castellated sheet of brown paper, looked at the Captain as he came in, with no very special encouragement.

`Mr. Carker?' said Captain Cuttle.

`I believe so,' said Mr. Carker, showing all his teeth.

The Captain liked his answering with a smile; it looked pleasant. `You see,' began the Captain, rolling his eyes slowly round the little room, and taking in as much of it as his shirt-collar permitted; `I'm a seafaring man myself, Mr. Carker, and Wal'r, as is on your books here, is almost a son of mine.'

`Walter Gay?' said Mr. Carker, showing all his teeth again.

`Wal'r Gay it is,' 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 dare say?'

`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 a 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 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.

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