duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, took
up another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that
one given to Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cut
his way through the enemy.

It turned out, however, that Mrs MacStinger had already changed her
course, and that she headed, as the Captain had remarked she often did,
in quite a new direction. For when they got downstairs, they found that
exemplary woman beating the mats on the doorsteps, with Alexander,
still upon the paving-stone, dimly looming through a fog of dust; and
so absorbed was Mrs MacStinger in her household occupation, that when
Captain Cuttle and his visitors passed, she beat the harder, and neither
by word nor gesture showed any consciousness of their vicinity. The
Captain was so well pleased with this easy escape--although the effect
of the door-mats on him was like a copious administration of snuff, and
made him sneeze until the tears ran down his face--that he could hardly
believe his good fortune; but more than once, between the door and the
hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with an obvious apprehension of
Mrs MacStinger's giving chase yet.

However, they got to the corner of Brig Place without any molestation
from that terrible fire-ship; and the Captain mounting the
coach-box--for his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with the
ladies, though besought to do so--piloted the driver on his course for
Captain Bunsby's vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and was
lying hard by Ratcliffe.

Arrived at the wharf off which this great commander's ship was jammed
in among some five hundred companions, whose tangled rigging looked
like monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle appeared at the
coach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to accompany him
on board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-hearted
in respect of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his
expansive intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the
Cautious Clara.

Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking her little hand
in his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage,
paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see, over several
very dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautious
craft (which lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, and
half-a-dozen feet of river interposed between herself and