But how to overcome the difficulty?—­It is true that I loved Julia Jowler—­loved her to madness; but her father intended her for a Member of Council at least, and not for a beggarly Irish ensign.  It was, however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the “Samuel Snob” East Indiaman, Captain Duffy,) with this lovely creature, and my misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with her.  We were not out of the Channel before I adored her, worshipped the deck which she trod upon, kissed a thousand times the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit.  The same madness fell on every man in the ship.  The two mates fought about her at the Cape; the surgeon, a sober, pious Scotchman, from disappointed affection, took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten spontaneous combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife and seven daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from Mrs. L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me, with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs. Duffy, although he had had nineteen children by her.

We used to call her the witch—­there was magic in her beauty and in her voice.  I was spell-bound when I looked at her, and stark staring mad when she looked at me!  O lustrous black eyes!—­O glossy night-black ringlets!—­O lips!—­O dainty frocks of white muslin!—­O tiny kid slippers!—­though old and gouty, Gahagan sees you still!  I recollect, off Ascension, she looked at me in her particular way one day at dinner, just as I happened to be blowing on a piece of scalding hot green fat.  I was stupefied at once—­I thrust the entire morsel (about half a pound) into my mouth.  I made no attempt to swallow, or to masticate it, but left it there for many minutes, burning, burning!  I had no skin to my palate for seven weeks after, and lived on rice-water during the rest of the voyage.  The anecdote is trivial, but it shows the power of Julia Jowler over me.

The writers of marine novels have so exhausted the subject of storms, shipwrecks, mutinies, engagements, sea-sickness, and so forth, that (although I have experienced each of these in many varieties) I think it quite unnecessary to recount such trifling adventures; suffice it to say, that during our five months’ trajet, my mad passion for Julia daily increased; so did the captain’s and the surgeon’s; so did Colonel Lilywhite’s; so did the doctor’s, the mate’s—­that of most part of the passengers, and a considerable number of the crew.  For myself, I swore—­ensign as I was—­I would win her for my wife; I vowed that I would make her glorious with my sword—­that as soon as I had made a favorable impression on my commanding officer (which I did not doubt to create), I would lay open to him the state of my affections, and demand his daughter’s hand.  With such sentimental outpourings did our voyage continue and conclude.

We landed at the Sunderbunds on a grilling hot day in December, 1802, and then for the moment Julia and I separated.  She was carried off to her papa’s arms in a palanquin, surrounded by at least forty hookahbadars; whilst the poor cornet, attended but by two dandies and a solitary beasty (by which unnatural name these blackamoors are called), made his way humbly to join the regiment at head-quarters.