Ratcliffe will be left behind. I'll ask the captain to wait." About a
dozen passengers had arrived, among them the two Earls, with a
footman carrying a promising lunch-basket, and the planks were
actually hauled in when a carriage dashed up to the whatf, and Mr.
Ratcliffe leaped out and hurried on board. "Off with you as quick
as you can!" said he to the negro-hands, and in another moment the
little steamer had begun her journey, pounding the muddy waters
of the Potomac and sending up its small column of smoke as
though it were a newly invented incense-burner approaching the
temple of the national deity. Ratcliffe explained in great glee how
he had barely managed to escape his visitors by telling them that
the British Minister was waiting for him, and that he would be
back again presently. "If they had known where I was going," said
he, "you would have seen the boat swamped with office-seekers.
Illinois alone would have brought you to a watery grave." He was
in high spirits, bent upon enjoying his holiday, and as they passed
the arsenal with its solitary sentry, and the navy-yard, with its one
unseaworthy wooden war-steamer, he pointed out these evidences
of national grandeur to Lord Skye, threatening, as the last terror of
diplomacy, to send him home in an American frigate. They were
thus indulging in senatorial humour on one side of the boat, while
Sybil and Victoria, with the aid of Mr. Gore and Carrington, were
improving Lord Dunbeg's mind on the other.
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