charming if she
ever smiled, but exposed as she is to the ridiculous whims and fancies
of a capricious mistress, her lips rarely relax from their ordinary
grave expression. Yet humiliating as her position must be, she never
utters a word of open complaint, but quietly and gracefully performs her
duties accepting without a murmur the paltry salary which the bumptious
petroleum-merchant condescends to allow her.

The Manchester engineer, William Falsten, looks like a thorough
Englishman. He has the management of some extensive hydraulic works in
South Carolina, and is now on his way to Europe to obtain some improved
apparatus, and more especially to visit the mines worked by centrifugal
force, belonging to the firm of Messrs. Cail. He is forty-five years of
age, with all his interests so entirely absorbed by his machinery that
he seems to have neither a thought nor a care beyond his mechanical
calculations. Once let him engage you in conversation, and there is no
chance of escape; you have no help for it but to listen as patiently as
you can until he has completed the explanation of his designs.

The last of our fellow-passengers, Mr. Ruby, is the type of a vulgar
tradesman. Without any originality or magnanimity in his composition, he
has spent twenty years of his life in mere buying and selling, and as
he has generally contrived to do business at a profit, he has realized a
considerable fortune. What he is going to do with the money, he does
not seem able to say: his ideas do not go beyond retail trade, his mind
having been so long closed to all other impressions that it appears
incapable of thought or reflection on any subject besides. Pascal says,
"L'homme est visiblement fait pour penser. C'est toute sa dignite
et tout-son merite;" but to Mr. Ruby the phrase seems altogether
inapplicable.

CHAPTER V.

OCTOBER 7th.--This is the tenth day since we left Charleston, and I
should think our progress has been very rapid. Robert Curtis, the mate,
with whom I continue to have many a friendly chat, informed me that we
could not be far off Cape Hatteras in the Bermudas; the ship's bearings,
he said were lat. 32deg. 20min. N. and long. 64deg. 50min. W., so that
he had every reason to believe that we should sight St. George's Island
before night.

"The Bermudas!" I exclaimed. "But how is it we are off the Bermudas? I
should have thought that a vessel sailing from Charleston to Liverpool,
would have kept northwards, and