“’Sir Marmaduke Travers is highly flattered by the charming note of the adorable daughter of Brahma; he shall gladly continue to bask in the sunshine of her smiles, out his ambition desires and will accept nothing more.’”

“Flowery and laconic,” said Fritz.

“Well,” inquired Willis, “was I not right in wishing to have the cage of Sir Marmaduke here?”

“Yes, but we cannot get it.  We have no ingenious trend at Calcutta to send us such a machine, and furnish it with crimson-cushioned sofas and pale ale, so we shall have to rest satisfied with our own ingenuity, tact, and agility.”

Fritz and Jack were justified in relying upon their own resources.  They had been often sorely tried, and never had been found wanting in cases of emergency.  Since the arrival of the Wolstons their courage had become almost temerity; previous to that event, they had been content to meet danger bravely when it was inevitable, and never went deliberately in search of it.  Now, however, if we apply the glass of which Sterne speaks to their breasts and spy what is passing therein, we shall fad that an imperious desire to become heroes had taken possession of their inward souls—­a determination to make themselves conspicuous at all hazards was burning within them; that, in fact, they were courting the admiration of the new audience that Providence had sent to the colony, the praise of which found more favor in their hearts than the paternal admonitions.

This was far from being commendable; but, although emulation and vanity have some features in common, still they must not be confounded:  the former consists in generous efforts to equal or surpass some one in something praiseworthy; the second is a kind of self-love, that seeks to purchase respect or flattery at no matter what cost;—­the one is a vice, the other a virtue.

Fritz and Jack were not actuated by vanity; they were urged on by their impulses, without weighing the circumstances that gave them rise; and indeed they were not even conscious of being more desirous of renown now than they had been hitherto.

The temperament of Ernest and Frank was of another kind.  Their natures were much less excitable, and it did not appear that the recent arrivals had altered their outward demeanor in the slightest degree; they continued calm, staid, and reflective, as they had ever been.

All four were a singular mixture of the child and the man—­knowing many things that young people are ignorant of, they were yet almost totally unacquainted with the ordinary attributes of social life—­unsophisticated and naive to an extreme degree, they would have appeared in a fashionable drawing-room downright fools.  On the other hand, they possessed great clearness of perception, presence of mind in danger, promptitude in action, and the utmost coolness in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles—­qualities that would have utterly confounded the young men who shine in the saloons of Europe, whose chief merit often consists in their being familiar with the unmeaning conventionalisms of fashionable life.