kernels I so much
coveted. At last, thought I, they are within my reach, and running
joyfully up to the light-hearted lad discovered, alas! that he was only
playing with brass buttons.

'After the first shock of my new disappointment had passed away, I
questioned the lad as to how he had disposed of the clove kernels, and
he told me that his father, who considered them excellent bait, had
taken them from him and given him three brass buttons in exchange.

'On asking him where his father was at the present moment, he pointed
with his sunburnt hand to the horizon, and looking in the direction
indicated, I perceived a little fishing-smack, miles away. Without the
loss of a single second, I hired a boat, and, with a boatman to assist,
rowed in pursuit, and after a chase of three or four hours drew up, in
an exhausted condition, alongside the smack. I now in piteous tones
begged the clove kernels of the weather-beaten mariner, but he only
laughed loudly and bitterly in reply, and, on my inquiring the reason of
his cruel mirth, told me in faltering accents that he had only just
hauled in his lines to discover that the fish had gone off with the bait
and hook as well. Thus doomed to disappointment, I spent the rest of the
day in a state of mind bordering on madness.

[Illustration: THE IMPROVEMENT WAS MAINTAINED]

'It was a little time after this that, one evening, I was sitting over
the kitchen fire. The cook had just served up an excellent dish of fish,
and my mind was still turning to Sicily in spite of my endeavours to
forget that there was such a place, and wondering if ever I should see
Basil Herbert again. Suddenly there was a most terrible disturbance
overhead in the dining-room, a noise as of plates being thrown from one
end of the room to the other, and presently wild shrieks and groans of
pain. I ran lightly upstairs, always ready to be of use in emergencies
of any kind, and opened the dining-room door just in time to see the
Marquis raving most pitifully. It transpired that the very identical
fish that had swallowed the hook and the clove kernels had been caught
and served up to the Marquis's table, and he, poor man, had just
swallowed the hook. Taking in the situation at a glance, I soon saw the
probability that the three clove kernels, or one or two of them, were in
the body of the fish, and walking boldly into the room I grasped the
fish by the tail, and took to my heels.

[Illustration: DISCOVERED A CLOVE