Part 9 (1/2)

'Yes'

'Oh, bring hi hi, it would have been difficult to say which of her audience listened with the hted attention The doctor's face was a study; the captain looked tenderly serious; Captain Bombazo, the black-moustachioed Spaniard, was animation personified; his dark eyes sparkled like diamonds, his very eyelids appeared to snap with pleasure

Even the stewards and stewardess lingered in the passage to listen with respectful attention, so that it is no wonder we boys were proud of our clever aunt

When she ceased at last there was that deep silence which is far more eloquent than applause The first to break it was Moncrieff

'Well,' he said, with a deep sigh, 'I never heard the like o' that afore!'

The friendly relations thus established in the saloon lasted all the voyage long--so did the captain's, the doctor's, and little Spanish officer's attentions to my aunt She had uratively, lay at her feet

Our voyage was by no means a very eventful one, and but little different from thousands of others that take place everytheMoncrieff led hison his arm She was indeed a e; for though her face was as yellow as a withered lea rasin, she walked erect and firht as a rush She was dressed with an eye to co, her cloak was trimmed with fur

On her head she wore a neat old-fashi+oned cap, and in her hand carried a huge green u she never laid down except at meals

[Illustration: 'I'll teach ye!']

This umbrella was a weapon of offence as well as defence We had proof of that on the very first day, for as he passed along the deck the second steward had the bad manners to titter Nextforce on his head, and he lay sprawling in the lee scuppers

'I'll teach ye,' she said, 'to laugh at an auld wife, you gang-the-gate swinger'

'Mither! mither!' pleaded Moncrieff, 'will you never be able to behave like a lady?'

The steward crawled forward crestfallen, and the et his adventure in a hurry

'Mither's a ma_rr_vel,' Moncrieff whispered to , for at table no 'laird's lady' could have behaved so well, albeit her droll re After dinner it was just the saood-nature, her excellent spirits and co she was by no means taken aback, but treated us to a ballad of five-and-twenty verses, with a chorus to each; but as it told a story of love and war, of battle and siege, of villainy for a time in the ascendant, and virtue triumphant at the end, it really was not a bit weariso a hundred reed that his e was uneventful, but this is talking as one who has been across the wide ocean e can be uneventful; but nothing very dreadful happened to ht in a tornado; ere not chased by a pirate;no suspicious sail; no ghostly voice hailed us froht hour; no shadowy for a leak, nor did thedown But we _did_ have foul weather off Finisterre; a ain; a shark _did_ follow the shi+p for a week, but got no corpse to devour, only the contents of the cook's pail, sundry bullets from sundry revolvers, and, finally, a red-hot brick rolled in a bit of blanket Well, of course, a man fell from aloft and knocked his shoulder out--a man always does--and Mother Carey's chickens flew around our stern, boding bad weather, which never came, and shoals of porpoises danced around us at sunset, andhuge whales pursuing their solitary path through the boso fish, and caught Cape pigeons, and wondered at thewithout hearing thunder, and heard thunder without seeing lightning; and in due course we heard the thrilling shout fro out, 'Where away?'

And lo and behold! three or four hours afterwards ere all on deck randeur of the shores of Rio, and the wondrous steeple-shaped mountain that stands sentry for ever and ever and ever at the entrance to the ht, Moncrieff rushed off into the cabin and bore his mother out

He held the old lady aloft, on one ar, as he pointed landwards--

'Look, mither, look! the Promised Land! Our new home in the Silver West!'

CHAPTER VII

ON Shore AT RIO

It ell on in the afternoon when land was sighted, but so accurately had the shi+p been navigated for all the long, pleasant weeks of our voyage that both the captain and his first officera little pride in their seamanshi+p Your British sailor, however, is always a htest approach to bombast The shi+p was noed, for we could not cross the bar that night

At the dinner-table ere all as merry as schoolboys on the eve of a holiday Old Jenny, as Moncrieff's mother had come to be called, was in excellent spirits, and her droll reh, but rendered it very difficult indeed for the stewards to ith anything approaching to _sang-froid_ Moncrieff was quietly happy He seereat a favourite Aunt, in her tropical toilet, looked angelic The adjective was applied by our o de Boreed that he had spoken the truth for once in a way Did he not always speak the truth? it may be asked I am not prepared to accuse the worthy Spaniard of deliberate falsehood, but if everything he told us was true, then he hand , than any lion-hunter that ever lived and breathed