After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the _Dunkeld_, then lying at the docks waiting for the _Edinburgh Castle_ due in from England.

I took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from the _Edinburgh Castle_ transhipped, and we weighed and put to sea.
Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my curiosity.

One, a gentleman of about thirty, was perhaps the biggest-chested and longest-armed man I ever saw.

He had yellow hair, a thick yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large grey eyes set deep in his head.

I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane.