"Jack is getting on like a house on fire," Signor Nicolo wrote in an envelope enclosing a rather grimy letter, which I received on the following morning; "he has not had a classical education, and so you can always make out what he means. Specimens to hand confirm his opinion. Perhaps I shall go out in the spring. Could not stand the cold there now. Come and see me whenever you think fit."

When this was put into my hand, I was ready to start for London, having promised to meet Stoneman outside the Exchange, at one o'clock. This had been my own proposal, for one can never be certain how a man may take great ups and downs of fortune; and although I had not much apprehension as to Stoneman's fortitude, it seemed to me that a good friend should be at hand and do his best for him. So I read the letter of young Jack Nickols, on my way to London-Bridge, and found it very straightforward and simple; and who cares for spelling after that? The rising generation gets on very well without it, and a thousand school-boards do their utmost to destroy its memory.

"Never did see a place so mountanious,"—this young fellow said, where I first began to read, for the Signor had kept the first page in his pocket, or leather bag, or steel safe, so far as I could tell—"you never get up to the jag of one knife-grinder, before you have got to fetch your wind, and grind your bones for another. The Alps is nothing to it; they goes up gradual, and is ever so much smaller to my mind. And you don't get big chaps here to shove you up and keep you straight. These fellows cackle at you with a horrid voice, and they squat in a ring and stare at you, if you want to go up any clumsy sort of peak, and they tell one another that all Englishmen are mad. But they are as sharp about the rhino as Petticoat Lane crossed with a New Cut costermonger; and you can't bring them to book, as you can a thief at home. You have to do it all through a chap who knows their lingo; and you can't make out what he is saying to them, and you can't be sure, without your revolver ready that they won't stick their skewers, which they call jingles, into your spine, without letting you look round. I had a poor time of it at first; but they seem to be getting now to make me out.

"When you come to know them, you might find worse fellows; for I cannot call them treacherous exackly. They would skin you to your spare-rib, if you let them have the chance; but they won't stick a knife into you, until you aggravate them. I am getting rather thick with some of them, by making out a little of their crack-jaw words, though there seems to be no end of them. But talk about jaws, I need not tell you, as you have seen too much of them. There was a man in Yorkshire, about fifty years ago, who could get through a lamb, and then three quarters of her mother. But one of these fellows would eat the whole sheep first, and then take her little ones for desert. But you must remember that their sheep weigh less than ours, and I like to see a man make a hearty dinner. But it is hard lines to pay him for the sheep; and then let him come to dine with you, as he must do, so that you never get a taste of it.

"However I am not complaining. The country must be beautiful, when the snow lets a fellow look at it, and you think the more about it, because it is out of sight. Tell Rosa that the girls are not a patch upon her, and she would laugh to see how they put their hair up. The men are not refined enough to think much of the women; but make them wear swabs upon their faces, and the insects are tremenjious in the summer-time. We have got more than we can do now to keep any road clear to get at the pocket where the stones are, just a soft place between two tremenjious rocks; down comes the snow again, and you could scarcely find it out, unless you leave a black tar-pole sticking up, and then you must fix it wonderfully firm, or you won't find it in the morning, for the wind does blow, I can tell you. We shall have to knock off for three months, I am afraid, and where am I to go to all the time? The Russians are not half bad fellows, only some of them too pious when you come to know them. Only you may be glad of that sometimes, because when they go to say their prayers, you get the best place by the fire. I don't care for quite so much tea myself, and I have not tasted a good bit of tobacco for a month. But everybody says that when some great man, who has been living for several years in England, and I do believe I have heard you speak of him, when he comes back they say he will change everything, all the thieves of the mountains will begin to say their prayers, and nobody will stick his best friend for nothing. If this can be managed, it will be a true excelsior.

"But you remember what the people said, the year we went to Yarmouth; and it is out of the question for me to say what I would give to be there now. They said, and you could not deny it when you wanted a bloater before they came in—'Sir, we lay ourselves out to oblige all the gents that come from London, but we cannot make a red herring swim.' I could not see exactly how they meant it, but it is just the same thing in the Caucasus.

"For a long time I could not see my way to be sure of not being struck at any moment. But I got over that idea, as we must, if we mean to get on anywhere. I will not say that my life is sacred now, as people express it in London; but ever since the popular opinion began to identify me with the Devil, through their ignorance of English manners, I have had a much better time of it. Tell Rosa, that in spite of uncommonly rough victuals, I weigh seven pounds more than I could pull, when she came to see me off at Wood-Green station. Nobody ever weighs anybody here, for after all they are not cannibals; though I told her so, to make her kiss me. But the steelyard I brought goes to half an ounce, and has saved me a lot of money. And tell her, if you think that it won't be too encroaching, under the peculiar circumstances, that I am not quite turned into the Devil yet, though she might say so if she could see me; and even if the climate had done it, an Angel like her need not be afraid of him. Hoping to come home with a sackful of emeralds, believe me, dear Uncle James, your most affectionate nephew,John Nickols."

At the bottom of this very vague and disjointed, but as it proved afterwards too true description, Signor Nicolo had written in pencil: "Rosa is my eldest daughter; but I shall have to put a stop to it."

"My noble countrymen!" as SÛr Imar used to call them,—it would take a long time to fetch them up to that mark, according to this English boy's account, and the enthusiastic chief could not begin too soon. It appeared to me that as many generations as he could trace from Karthlos would scarcely be enough to restore them to the level of antediluvian "culture." No wonder that he was in a hurry to begin; and if I am doomed to wait for the completion of his task, erit altera quÆ vehat Argo, there will be another ark on the top of Ararat. And sure enough, here is another Babel to begin with!

For in the absorption of the thoughts above recounted, I found myself caught in the whirl and crush and uproar of a crowd as wild as any savage land could show. A crowd not of paupers but well-dressed people roaring and raging and besieging the portals of the Stock Exchange. Battered hats, and coats in tatters, fists thrown up, but unable through crunched elbow to come down again, faces black with choking wrath, wherever the brown mud peeled from them, grinding teeth and cursing lips, and chests that groaned with the digs they took without any chance of returning them—I thought of Lord Melladew's father and the bullock compressed into his clover-hay. Only let me keep outside the pack of the central squeeze if possible; for once in there, no strength of man could get me out or let me out. So I put up my knee, which was a dangerous thing to do, for if I lost my feet good-bye to me; when a gentleman, with whom it would have been a joy to dine—so comely, and well-liking, and well-to-do was he—being unable to get at me with his fists, let out at me with language I had never heard the like of. I attempted no retort, for he had already got the worst of it, and without any knowledge how it came to pass, except that there must be more luck than wit in shoving, here I was with my clothes still pretty sound, outside the drum of squashed figs and squealing pigs.

But another poor fellow was not so lucky. "Let him go, slide him on, he'll be dead in half a minute. Serve him right. No, no. How'd you like it? Don't tread on him, more than you can help." It was a solid man upon the ground, but likely to be hollow, before ever he could be an upright man. I had got a short knob-stick in my hand (which I always carried, since my faith in human nature had waned through that dastardly bullet) and in the most blundering and selfish manner I set the knob against my breast and the stub-end foremost, and charged into the lump of figures across me. Considerable yielding, and heads running into heads, and yellow waistcoats sloping like sheaves of wheat in shock, and big boots toeing up at me, and a hail of blows in flank—it is impossible to say how I got on. But there must have been a hollow place somewhere in the mass, for they fought into a lane, and allowed me to lay hold of a pair of yellow shoes, or at least they had been yellow, and tow out the prostrate body on its back, and feel it for the signs of life or death. "Ain't dead yet," said a hoarse and husky voice; "never fainted in my life, and don't mean to do it now."

I admired the pluck of this poor fellow; for indeed he was in a frightful mess, and another half-minute must have silenced him forever. With the help of a bystander, who only cost a shilling, I was able to get my trodden friend across the street, and into a double doorway, where a score of people came and stared at him. "Well, if he ain't a tough 'un. Cut the poor bloke's collar. Stand him on his pins, and blow to him. Give him a drop of brandy." Advice poured in on every side, more freely than assistance.

"Don't you know who I am, you fools?" The injured man sat up with the aid of one hand on the stones, and gazed defiantly. "All over the world I've been, but never saw such cursed idiots. Captain Strogue, sir, of the British Pioneers."

He glanced at me with hazy eyes, which told of many strong waters, and would tell of many more, if Heaven permitted; and then he tried to bow, but a pang in his chest took the grace from that salutation. "All right! Down the alley, three doors to the left."

He shoved away all who pressed forward to lift him, but allowed me to help him with his knees still hanging, to the place he had indicated. And sure enough everybody knew him there.

"The Captain, the Captain, the bold British Captain! He have been in the wars, and no mistake!" Out came the landlady and the barmaid, with tears in their eyes—for he had promised to marry both—and an ancient potboy with all his wits about him brought a rummer and a teaspoon, and stirred up something hot. "That's the physic, ma'am," he said; and the lady smiled and offered it, and met with no refusal.

In a word, Captain Strogue was in the right place now, and after helping to bestow him snugly upon a horse-hair sofa in a small back room, I was at the point of leaving, when he put up one hand and stopped me.

"Owe you my life," he said; "not worth much now, but has done a deal of service to civilization. Near St. Paul's, ain't we? That's where they'll put me. Know your face very well, but can't remember."

He seemed to be dropping off into a doze, having finished his strong potation; but I told him my name and where I had met him, for I was eager to be off to keep my time with Stoneman.

"Don't be in a hurry, sir; you have helped me, and I can help you. Strogue pays his debts. Somebody else will find that out." His eyes shone fiercely, and he pressed his knuckles to his side. "Widow Lazenby knows what I am—don't you, ducky?"

"Oh, Captain! And at such a crisis!" the landlady murmured, after looking round to be certain where the barmaid was. "But, sir, he have described himself. Wonders he have done, without wondering at himself."

It is a righteous thing that men of such achievements should have their reward, where it is sweetest. Fame they may never get, for that is all a fluke; gold they scarcely ever gain, because they are no grubbers; love they cannot stop to grasp, and see but savage frames of it; rank they laugh at, having found it the chief delight of black boys; but to get his grog for glory, and his victuals for victory, is the utmost any English pioneer can hope of England.

"Cranleigh, you can go," said Strogue, for his manners were not perfect; "you are involved in this little shindy, and you want to know all about it. These thieves shut shop at one o'clock on a Saturday, some one told me. But if you will come back by two, I shall have set this rib by then, and have rump-steak and oysters. Join me, without any ceremony. I owe you a debt, and you shall have it."

I had seen too many strange things now to be surprised at anything, as I might have been six months ago; and it was plain that this companion of the hateful Hafer meant to do me some good turn at a private opportunity. So I promised to return by two o'clock, and hurried to Stoneman's business place, avoiding the crowd that still was yelling at every approach to the House of Mammon. "Bless you, sir; it is nothing at all compared to what it was yesterday. Ah, that was something like a row!" a big policeman told me; "there was fifty taken to hospital, and the barriers snapped like hurdles. Why, there ain't been half-a-dozen ribs to-day. You can't call that no panic."

Neither did I find any panic at Jackson Stoneman's offices. A stolid old clerk was putting things away, and evidently anxious to get home to early dinner. He told me that his principal had been disappointed at not meeting me, and concluded (as the train had been in long enough) that something had occurred to stop me, and so had departed on his own account. When I asked how things had gone that morning, old Peppersall eyed me with some indignation, as if it were impossible for anything to go wrong with a firm so stable and majestic. "Well, how did the senior partner look?" I asked; and Peppersall replied: "He was a bit put out about a sixpence that rolled off a desk in room No. 8, till it turned up under the wainscoting."

"You'll do," I said rather rudely, for this rebuff was not too courteous, and he stared at me as if there could be any doubt about his doing. "That is the sort of fellow for a business-man, instead of any new young manager"—was my reflection, as I strode with good heart towards the rump-steak and oysters.

Captain Strogue had been sponged and darned and brushed and polished up—so far as he was capable of polish—by skilful and tender hands, and was sitting in a brown arm-chair, as bolt upright as if his ribs had thickened, as a barn-floor does, by the flail of many heels upon them. "Keep 'em like that," he said, "for about two hours, and fill up well inside, and it stands to reason that they must come right—can't help themselves. Doctors? None of them for Bat Strogue. The only doctor I ever knew was any good is down your way now, a queer German cove. Say grace for me, and carve for me, and fall to, my son. Take me for your guest; and you might have a more squeamish one."