"Touch your hat, you dog!" cries Frere, coming to the quarter-railing.
"Touch your damned hat! Do you hear?"

Rufus Dawes touched his cap, saluting in half military fashion.
"I'll make some of you fellows smart, if you don't have a care,"
went on the angry Frere, half to himself. "Insolent blackguards!"

And then the noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him,
grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall,
soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features,
came out of the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected,
mincing lady, of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment,
ordered for service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck
to get an appetite for dinner.

Mrs. Vickers was forty-two (she owned to thirty-three), and had been
a garrison-belle for eleven weary years before she married prim John Vickers.
The marriage was not a happy one. Vickers found his wife extravagant,
vain, and snappish, and she found him harsh, disenchanted, and commonplace.
A daughter, born two years after their marriage, was the only link
that bound the ill-assorted pair. Vickers idolized little Sylvia,
and when the recommendation of a long sea-voyage for his failing health
induced him to exchange into the --th, he insisted upon bringing
the child with him, despite Mrs. Vickers's reiterated objections
on the score of educational difficulties. "He could educate her himself,
if need be," he said; "and she should not stay at home."

So Mrs. Vickers, after a hard struggle, gave up the point
and her dreams of Bath together, and followed her husband
with the best grace she could muster. When fairly out to sea