Part 46 (2/2)

Then the Admiral packed up his things.

He regretted that he had not a visiting-card, not even a photograph to give his successor, but handed over instead the younger wife of his late master as a trifling souvenir.

On reaching the deck, to his indescribable annoyance he perceived the King, with his brother-in-law, his four hundred warriors, and the elder wife, standing on the sh.o.r.e, slapping their stomachs, the superlative expression of mischievous delight in those parts.

The foregoing brief narrative is to be taken as a truthful and dispa.s.sionate account of the manner in which the Admiral attained his t.i.tle and dignity.

The remainder of his doings during his sojourn abroad, before he returned to settle down in his native town on the coast, is soon told.

The Admiral was not a man to be long idle, and, as a sailor, he could always find a way. He captained vessels for Chinese and j.a.panese owners, both sail and steam. He started a fleet of tugs at Tientsin, and obtained a concession for dredging the harbour of Shanghai, with a host of other things, making a very considerable fortune out of the whole.

Then he turned his steps towards home, and purchased the house of his fathers on the hill just above the Custom House.

He dismantled the old place almost entirely of its furniture, and had it fitted up according to his own ideas, as a sort of bungalow.

There were weapons all over the place; spears, bows and arrows, pistols and guns of all sorts. Pot-bellied idols smirked in every corner; lion and tiger skins were spread on the floor. But the drawing-room on the ground floor and the office in the side wing, that had been his father's in the old days, he left untouched. He even went so far as to have the successive layers of wallpaper, that in course of years had been hung one over another, carefully removed one by one until he came to the identical one that had adorned the place when he was a little lad and his mother and father were still alive. Then he went about all over the town, trying to buy up the old pieces of furniture that had been sold and scattered about thirty or forty years before. He went far up into one of the outlying villages to get hold of one particular birchwood cabinet which he had learned was to be found there. He also managed to unearth his father's old writing-desk, and had it set up in its old place in the ”office.” And at last he really succeeded in restoring the two rooms almost completely to their former state. Then and not till then was he satisfied, and began, as it were, to live his life over again.

The Admiral was now a man about sixty. A giant of a man to look at, with hands and arms of an athlete and well proportioned.

He had a big, curved nose, a trifle over large, perhaps. And the eyes that shone out from beneath the great bushy brows were not of the sort that give way. His whole face bore the stamp of unscrupulous firmness, softened a little, however, by the heavy whiskers generally affected by naval officers in those days, and which in his case were now perfectly white.

When the Admiral came home he brought with him a little girl twelve years old. A queer little creature she was, with somewhat darker skin than we are accustomed to see, and brilliant black eyes.

”My daughter,” said the Admiral, and that was all the information to be obtained from that quarter.

It was generally surmised that she must be the offspring of his alliance with the young Queen of Zumba-Lumba, who had, as we know, been on board the gunboat; _ergo_, she was of royal blood. And the whole town accordingly styled her simply ”The Princess.”

As to whether he had contracted other alliances elsewhere none could say, for the old servant, or lady companion, whom he had brought with him from abroad, was dumb as a door-post when the talk turned in that direction.

She was English and somewhat over fifty. Miss Jenkins was her name, but the Admiral invariably called her ”Missa.” Missa was the only person who ever ventured to oppose him. Now and then the pair of them might be heard arguing hotly, always in English, till at last he would shout at her: ”Mind your own business, please!” This was his stock phrase for terminating an argument when he did not care to discuss the matter further.

The Princess was to be confirmed. And there was a great to-do in view of the event.

The parson, naturally enough, requested the usual particulars--parents' names, place of birth, date, certificate of vaccination, etc. The whole town was curious now, and great excitement prevailed; at last the mystery would be solved. The parson had to go down to the Admiral himself, and inform him, as politely as possible, that the law required compliance with certain formalities; an especially important point was that the names of both father and mother should be correctly stated.

”She has no mother,” the Admiral categorically declared.

”But, my dear Admiral, she must have had a mother. In the ordinary course of nature....”

”The course of nature's extraordinary where she comes from.”

”But you must have been married, surely?”

The Admiral glared, and his bushy brows contracted.

”Who?”

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