difficulties
until they were quite settled.

'If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore,' said
Captain Cuttle in the same tone, 'and ask him his opinion of it, Wal'r,
he'd give you an opinion that was no more like that buoy than your
Uncle's buttons are. There ain't a man that walks--certainly not on two
legs--that can come near him. Not near him!'

'What's his name, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter, determined to be
interested in the Captain's friend.

'His name's Bunsby, said the Captain. 'But Lord, it might be anything
for the matter of that, with such a mind as his!'

The exact idea which the Captain attached to this concluding piece of
praise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw
it forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to
himself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he
soon discovered that the Captain had relapsed into his former profound
state of mind; and that while he eyed him steadfastly from beneath his
bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remained
immersed in cogitation.

In fact, Captain Cuttle was labouring with such great designs, that far
from being aground, he soon got off into the deepest of water, and could
find no bottom to his penetration. By degrees it became perfectly plain
to the Captain that there was some mistake here; that it was undoubtedly
much more likely to be Walter's mistake than his; that if there were
really any West India scheme afoot, it was a very different one from
what Walter, who was young and rash, supposed; and could only be some
new device for making his fortune with unusual celerity. 'Or if there
should be any little hitch between 'em,' thought the Captain, meaning
between Walter and Mr Dombey, 'it only wants a word in season from a
friend of both parties, to set it right and smooth, and make all taut
again.' Captain Cuttle's deduction from these considerations was, that
as he already enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey, from having
spent a very agreeable half-hour in his company at Brighton (on the
morning when they borrowed the money); and that, as a couple of men of
the world, who understood each other, and were mutually disposed to make
things comfortable, could easily arrange any little difficulty of this
sort, and come at the real facts; the friendly thing for him to do would
be, without saying anything about it to Walter at present, just to step