have been waiting for you with some impatience;" he said, "to be
present at the hunt after a white ant's nest, a sort of thing I know
you like. These rogues, the _Termites bellicosi_, as I find the
naturalists call them, have made their way into the house! and having
carried their galleries up the walls and along the roof, have come
down in great force upon a trunk of clothes, which they would have
destroyed entirely before night, had I not caught sight of them. Now
let us to work; for I propose to rip up the floor of the verandah, in
order to follow their passages and galleries till I reach their nest,
if it be a mile off; won't this he a glorious piece of service?"
exclaimed the Admiral, as he warmed himself by anticipating the chase.
He could hardly have been more delighted, I am persuaded, had he been
giving orders for a fleet under his command to bear down upon the
enemy's line. I could not venture to do more than bow, and say I was
much obliged to him for having so considerately thought of me at such
a moment.

"Oh!" cried he, apparently recollecting himself, "but I have something
else to show you; or rather to tell you, for I must not show it;
though I fear it will not please you quite so much as the prospect of
a white ant-hunt. Here, Gigna," called the Admiral to his steward, who
stood by with a tea-kettle of hot water, ready to pour over the ants,
"put away that affair, which we shall not require this half-hour yet;
and hold this crow-bar while I step into the office with Mr. Hall."

"It is of no use to mince the matter," said the veteran, shutting the
door, and turning to me with somewhat of the air which he might be
supposed to have put on, had he been instructed from home to tell me
that one or both my parents were dead; "it is no use to conceal the
fact from you; but here is the Admiralty List, just come to my hands,
and your name, in spite of all you tell me of promises, verbal and
written, is NOT ON IT!"

Had the Admiral fired one of the flag-ship's thirty-two pounders,
double-shotted, down my throat, he could not have demolished more
completely my bodily framework than this fatal announcement shattered
to pieces the gilded crockeryware of my fondest hopes. All the gay
visions of command, and power, and independence, in which I had
indulged my fancy during the voyage, vanished like the shadows of a
dream I fain would recall, but could not. I was at first quite
stupified, and can remember nothing that