"I'll make some of you fellows smart, if you don't have a care," went on the angry Frere, half to himself.

"Insolent blackguards!" And then the noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him, grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts.

A thin, tall, soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady, of middle age.

Captain Vickers, of Mr.Frere's regiment, ordered for service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to get an appetite for dinner.
Mrs.Vickers was forty-two (she owned to thirty-three), and had been a garrison-belle for eleven weary years before she married prim John Vickers.

The marriage was not a happy one.