I promise you: and nothing under our lee nearer
than Rotterdam."

A loud cry from the deck above, "A LIGHT
ON THE LEE BOW!"

"There!" cried Robarts, with an oath: "foul
of her next! through me listening to your
nonsense. He ran upon deck, and shouted through
his trumpet, "All hands wear ship!"

The crew, who had heard the previous cry,
obeyed orders in the presence of an immediate
danger: and perhaps their growl had really
relieved their ill humour. Robarts with delight
saw them come tumbling up, and gave his orders
lustily:

"Brail up the trysel! Up with the helm! in
with the weather main brace! square the after
yards!"

The ship's bow turned from the wind, and, as
soon as she got way on her, Robarts ran below
again; and entered the cabin triumphant.

"That is all right: and now, Captain Dodd, a
word with you: you will either retire at once to
your cabin, or will cease to breed disaffection in
my crew, and groundless alarm in my passengers,
by instilling your own childish, ignorant fears.
The ship has been underlogged a hundred miles,
and but for my caution in lying to for clear
weather we should be groping among the Fern
isl——"

CRASH!

An unheard-of shock threw the speaker and all
the rest in a mass on the floor, smashed every
lamp, put out every light: and, with a fierce
grating noise, the ship was hard and fast on the
French coast, with her stern to the sea.

One awful moment of silence; then amidst
shrieks of agony, the sea struck her like a rolling
rock, solid to crush, liquid to drown: and the
comb of a wave smashed the cabin windows and
rushed in among them as they floundered on the
floor; and wetted and chilled them to the marrow;
a voice in the dark cried, "Oh God! we are dead
men!"

INDIAN SERVANTS.

EVERYBODY in India has servants—every
European, at any rate. There is no such
arrangement known as depending upon the
servants of other people, as do bachelors of
moderate means, and others who choose to live in
lodgings, in England. A native will not serve
two masters—at least, not avowedly. He has
been sometimes known to take two salaries
under the rose, and to divide his attentions
between two persons—but in such a case the
dishonesty compensates him, I suppose, for the
unnatural character of the proceeding. As a general
rule, the humblest of Europeans in India
employ natives still humbler, to do their bidding,
if a gentleman keep an European man-servant
—a very rare occurrence, by the way—that
manservant will keep at least one native, to whom
he stands in the proud relation of master.
And if a lady keep an European maid—which
is much more frequent—that maid will have her
native Ayah almost as a matter of course. Even
soldiers in barracks do not attend upon
themselves as they do in England. Cavalry troopers
have a certain number of Syces assigned them to
look after their horses; and in the infantry,
also, natives do a great deal of the rough work
for the men, who have an easy time of it
compared with their daily experience in this
country. In India, in fact, everybody has a
subordinate—the native servants themselves
finding others of a lower class to do their
bidding. In England, Captain Absolute lords it
over Fag, and Fag lords it over the Boy: in India
the boy has somebody to lord it over too, and
the boy's somebody has his victim.

You may suppose, therefore, that an Englishman
in India who happens to be a gentleman—
or to occupy the position of one—has a little
troop of dependents always at his back. They
are a great nuisance at first. He does not know
one from the other, so much alike do they look.
But as a shepherd makes the individual
acquaintance of his flock by degrees, so does the
English master gradually recognise the natives
in his pay, and reconcile himself, after a time, to
being followed and watched about, and receiving
assistance which he does not require. An
Englishman, upon his first arrival in Calcutta, still
indulges in his home idea that he is competent
to retire to rest without the co-operation of any
other individual. But he finds, at the outset,
that he is not master of his own actions in this
respect. The personal attendant whom he has
engaged in the morning is not so easy to be
thrown off at night. The idea of walking
upstairs with a flat candlestick, and locking
himself in his bedroom, is too preposterous to be
entertained. There is no such thing as a flat
candlestick to be had, in all probability, and it
may be that the room has no door more decided
than a curtain. However, the apartment is sure
to be well lighted up, and is destined to
remain so all night; and the servant, who insists
upon superintending his master's night toilette
down to the minutest particulars, sleeps on
the mat outside, so that the arrangement is a
cheerful one after all. On getting up in the
morning, the master finds himself subjected to
a similar ordeal. The attention bestowed is
very different from the forbearing courtesy of
an European valet, being aggressive and highly
irritating to a new arrival. Of course the master
is not allowed to shave himself— there is a
barber in attendance, who takes care of that,
and who will shave him before he is awake if he
so desire. Indeed, I have known many men
who never had any anxiety about their beards
through a happy acquiescence in this plan. In
the matter of his bath, an Englishman is very
apt to consider himself a free agent; but
even this privilege is looked upon, I believe,
with a jealous eye, native servants having a
dread of allowing their master to be independent
in any way of their help, or, rather, of that
vague kind of superintendence which they claim
to  exercise over all his actions.