That same evening, in Mr. Matthew Wesley's parlour, Johnson's Court,
Captain Bewes told the whole story--or so much of it as he knew.
The disappearance from on board his ship of a person so important as
Mr. Samuel Annesley touched his prospects in the Company's service,
and he did not conceal it. He had already reported the affair at the
East India House and was looking forward to a highly uncomfortable
interview with the Board of Governors: but he was concerned, too, as
an honest man; and had jumped at Mrs. Wesley's invitation to sup with
her in Johnson's Court and tell what he could.

Mr. Matthew Wesley, as host, sat at the head of his table and puffed
at a churchwarden pipe; a small, narrow-featured man, in a
chocolate-coloured suit, with steel buttons, and a wig of
professional amplitude. On his right sat his sister-in-law, her
bonnet replaced by a tall white cap: on his left the Captain in his
shore-going clothes. He and the apothecary had mixed themselves a
glass apiece of Jamaica rum, hot, with sugar and lemon-peel.
At the foot of the table, with his injured leg supported on a
cushion, reclined the Reverend Samuel Wesley, Junior, Usher of
Westminster School, his gaunt cheeks (he was the plainest-featured of
the Wesleys) wan with recent illness, and his eyes fixed on Captain
Bewes's chubby face.

"Well, as I told you, Mr. Annesley's cabin lay beside my state-room,
with a window next to mine in the stern: and, as I showed Mrs. Wesley
to-day, my stateroom opens on the 'captain's cabin' (as they call
it), where I have dined as many as two dozen before now, and where I
do the most of my work. This has three windows directly under the