sometimes have to marry Yankees as a dernier ressort of desperation!  Of course, there are occasional sad exceptions”—­looking grave for a moment, and glancing at the black hat-band on the Panama hat he was nursing on his knees, so as to let the breeze blow through his silky, silver-streaked black hair—­“but—­but—­in short, why will you all look so doleful?  Isn’t it bad enough to feel so?”

“The loveliest fade earliest, we all know,” and the tears were in his honest, frivolous eyes, dashed away in the next moment as he exclaimed, eagerly, “Why, there goes the Lamarque equipage, as I live!  I had forgotten all about it.  The pleasantest woman in Savannah, young or old, is to be your compagnon de voyage, Miss Harz, and the most determined widower on record her escort; a perfect John Rogers of a man, with nine little motherless children, her brother Raguet (’Rag,’ as we called him at school, on account of his prim stiffness, so that ‘limber as a rag’ seemed a most preposterous saying in his vicinity).  He is handsome, however, and intelligent, a perfect gentleman, but on the mourners’ bench just now, like some others you know of”—­heaving a deep sigh.  “His wife, poor thing, died last autumn—­a pretty girl in her day was Cornelia Huger!  I was a little weak in that direction once myself—­before—­that is, before—­O doctor! what a trouble it is to remember!”

And again the small, fleet hand was dashed across the twinkling, tearful eyes of this April day of a middle-aged man of the world—­this modern Mercutio—­merry and mournful at once, as if there were two sides to his every mood, like the famous shield of story.  When we reached the quay the Kosciusko was already getting up her steam, and, in less than an hour afterward, the friends I loved were gone like dreams, the bustle of departure was over, and, with lifted canvas and a puffing engine, we were grandly steaming past the noble forts (poor Bertie’s broach and buckle, be it remembered) on our path of pride and power toward the broad Atlantic.

The weather was oppressively hot, and, for the first thirty-six hours, scarcely a breath of wind lifted us on our way, so that the engine, wholly incompetent to the work of both sails and machinery, bore us very slowly on our northward ocean-flight.  Indeed, the failure of this engine to do its duty, at first, had sorely disheartened both captain and crew as we found later, for upon its execution and energies, in the beginning, had rested our entire dependence.

On the evening of the second day’s voyage, a sudden and violent thunder-storm occurred, not unusual in those latitudes; during the raging of which our mainmast was struck by lightning, and wholly disabled.

The fire was extinguished in the only possible manner, by cutting it away from the decks, letting it gently down upon them, deluging it, so that our mast lay charred and blackened after its bath of sea-water, like a mighty serpent stretched along the ship, from stem to stern, and wrapped loosely in its shrouds.  It did us good service later, though not by defying the winds of heaven, nor spreading forth its snowy sails to catch the tropic breezes.