If it be true that there is “many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip”—which we have no reason to doubt—it is not less true that many a cup of good fortune is, unexpectedly and unsought, raised to the lips of thankless man.

 

Captain Samson was seated one fine summer evening in his shore-going cabin, that used to be the abode of fishy smells, marine-stores, Polly, and bliss, but which now presented an unfurnished and desolate aspect. He had just returned from a voyage. Little “kickshaws” for Polly lay on the table before him, and a small fire burned in the grate, with a huge kettle thereon. A stormy sigh escaped the captain as he glanced round the old room.

 

“Come, come, Samson,” he exclaimed, apostrophising himself, “this will never do. You mustn’t give way to the blues. It’s true you haven’t got as much to leave to Polly when you slip your cable as you once had; but you have scraped together a little these few years past, and there’s lots of work in you yet, old boy. Besides, it’s His way of ordering events, and that way must be right, whatever it appears to me. Why, Samson, for all your preaching to others, your own faith isn’t as big as a grain of mustard seed. Ah! Polly, you’re a woman now a’most—and a beauty, I’ll be bound. I wish you’d come though. You’re not up to time, young ’ooman. It’s as well you’ve got one or two faults, just to keep you in sympathy with other mortals. Ah, here you come.”

 

He hastened to answer a double knock at the door, and checked himself, not a moment too soon, from giving a warm embrace to the postman. Under a strong impulse to knock the man down he took a letter from him, flung it on the table, and shut the door. After pacing the room for some time impatiently he sat down, opened the letter, and read it aloud. It ran thus:—

 

    “Sir—Having been for some years past engaged in diving operations at the wreck of the Rainbow—lost off the coast of Cornwall in 18 hundred and something, I write to say that I have recovered a large chest of gold with your name on the inside of it, and that of a man named Simon O’Rook. Most of the gold recovered from the Rainbow has been scattered about, but in all cases when ownership could be proved, I have handed over the property. If you can give such an account of the contents of the chest referred to as shall satisfy me that it is yours, the part of its contents which belongs to you shall be restored.

 

    “I would feel obliged if you could give me any clew to the whereabouts of O’Rook.—I am, etcetera.”

 

“The whereabouts of O’Rook!” cried the captain, starting up and gazing at the letter; “why, he’s my own first mate, an’ close alongside at this good hour!”

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