e right of
Captain Ringgold, as the guest of honor, and treated with distinguished
consideration by all the people from the shore.

The dinner was Mr. Melancthon Sage's crowning effort, as he had been
ordered to make it. Not a word was said, or an allusion made, to the
scenes of the past in which the trouble had bubbled up. The commander
made a speech, and proclaimed his temperance principle so originally
that the military guests hardly missed the wine to which they were
accustomed. Some of them spoke, mostly of the ship and her agreeable
passengers; but all agreed the Pacha made the speech of the evening,
which was a comparison between his own country and those in which he had
spent so large a portion of his life. In the first place, he was a very
handsome man; his English was perfect; and he had a poetic nature, which
developed itself in the flowery language he used.

It was a very delightful occasion, and everybody enjoyed it without any
drawbacks. The Maud was at the gangway to take the party ashore; for the
Parsee merchants had invited the military officers to make use of her.
By eleven o'clock all were gone in that direction. Captain Ringgold had
intended to sail for Bombay the next day; but the extraordinary event
which had transpired at Aden decided him to remain another day.

The party from the Blanche, attended by the commander, were put on
board of their steamer, in the barge. On her return Captain Ringgold was
very anxious to ascertain what impression had been made upon the
passengers by His Highness the Pacha. They insisted that he was not the
same man at all, and that they had been pleased with him. Had he really
reformed his life? Mrs. Belgrave had heard from Mrs. Sharp a fuller
account of the conversion of the sinner in a high place, and she
believed it.

Louis Belgrave sat at the side of Miss Blanche, and she had little
knowledge of the intentions of the Pacha so far as she was concerned. He
had treated her with the most scrupulous politeness and reserve, and she
admitted that she "rather liked him." Mrs. Blossom declared that he was
still a heathen, and wondered that Mrs. Sharp had not converted him to
Christianity while she was about it, as she would have done if she had
had the opportunity. But the good woman would probably have lost her
case if she had tried to do too much at once.

The next day the intercourse between the two steamers was renewed; and
the Pacha was decidedly a lion, though he