"As you have done me the honor to visit me in my cabin, Captain Flanger, it is reasonable to suppose you have some object in view, for I do not regard it as a merely friendly call." Though the young officer was prudent and discreet, he did not lose his self-possession, and he smiled as though he had been simply the host in the dining-room of the mansion at Bonnydale.

There was a certain humor about the intruder which would have pleased him under other circumstances.
"Quite right, captain!" exclaimed the visitor.

"I have an object in view, and both my inclination and my duty are urging me to carry it out.

How your boat happened to capture the Magnolia is beyond my comprehension up to the present moment, though I think the principal reason was the lack of a sufficiently osseous vertebra on the part of your worthy uncle, Colonel Passford.

Then the officer in charge of the cutter did not do what I expected him to do.