It was,
however, my fate to make the passage to India (on board of the "Samuel
Snob" East Indiaman, Captain Duffy,) with this lovely creature, and my
misfortune instantaneously to fall in love with her. We were not out
of the Channel before I adored her, worshipped the deck which she trod
upon, kissed a thousand times the cuddy-chair on which she used to sit.
The same madness fell on every man in the ship. The two mates fought
about her at the Cape; the surgeon, a sober, pious Scotchman, from
disappointed affection, took so dreadfully to drinking as to threaten
spontaneous combustion; and old Colonel Lilywhite, carrying his wife and
seven daughters to Bengal, swore that he would have a divorce from Mrs.
L., and made an attempt at suicide; the captain himself told me,
with tears in his eyes, that he hated his hitherto-adored Mrs. Duffy,
although he had had nineteen children by her.
We used to call her the witch--there was magic in her beauty and in her
voice. I was spell-bound when I looked at her, and stark staring mad
when she looked at me! O lustrous black eyes!--O glossy night-black
ringlets!--O lips!--O dainty frocks of white muslin!--O tiny kid
slippers!--though old and gouty, Gahagan sees you still! I recollect,
off Ascension, she looked at me in her particular way one day at dinner,
just as I happened to be blowing on a piece of scalding hot green fat.
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