"Zounds, Sir!" he was saying. "I don't know what you mean by effects.
All mine are on board. What do you say, Mr. TUGLEY?" he went on,
looking at me with a look full of corkscrews and broken glass,
while his choleric face showed of a purple hue under the effort of
utterance.

"Well, Colonel," I replied, in an off-hand way, so as not to irritate
him, "I keep my best effects here;" and, so saying, I produced my
note-book, and tapped it significantly. "What, for instance, do you
say to this?"

But, what follows, needs another chapter.


CHAPTER III.

I found the place in my notebook, cleared my voice, and began.
"The ship was sailing gloriously under a press of canvas. Her
foretopgallant-sail swelled to its cotton-like hue out of the black
shadow of its incurving. High aloft, the swelling squares of her
studding-sails gleamed in the misty sheen of the pale luminary,
flinging her frosty light from point to point of the tapering masts,
which rose, rose, rose into the morning air, as though with intent
to pierce the glowing orb of day, poised in the heavens like one vast
ball of liquid fire. Through the wind-hushed spaces of the canvas,
where the foretopmaststay-sail--"

"I know that foretopmaststay-sail," said the funny man, suddenly. I
withered him with a look, and turned over the page.