It was about a week afterwards, and we began to have rough touches of Cape weather, pitching away on cross seas, and handing our 'gallant-sails oftener of a night, that Lord Frederick said to me one evening, before going down to his cabin, "Mr Collins, I really hope we shall not find your Indiaman at Cape Town, after all!" "Indeed, Lord Frederick!" said I, respectfully enough; but it was the very thing I hoped myself. "Yes, sir," continued he; "as I received strict injunctions by Admiral Plampin to arrest Lieutenant Westwood if we fell in with her there, and otherwise, to send the schooner in her track, even if it were to Bombay." "The deuce!" I thought, "are we never to be done with this infernal affair?" "'Tis excessively disagreeable," continued the Captain, swinging his gold eye-glass round his finger by the chain, as was his custom when bothered, and looking with one eye all the while at the schooner. "A beautiful craft, by the way, Mr Collins!" said he, "even within sight of the Hebe." "She is so, my lord," said I; "if she had only had a sensible boatswain, even, to put the sticks aloft in her." "I say, Mr Collins," went on his lordship, musingly, "I think I have it, though--the way to get rid of this scrape!"
I waited and waited, however, for Lord Frederick to mention this; and to no purpose, apparently, as he went below without saying a word more about it.
I never heard, nor is it important, why my father, Major Von Degen, an old officer of the King's German Legion, resolved to have me educated in his native country, unvisited by him since boyhood, and supplanted in his affections, to all outward appearance, by the land he long had served and dwelt in, of whose daughters he had taken a wife, and in which he proposed to end his days. Be that as it may, at an early age I was sent from England to a town in the north of Germany, where I passed four years in the house of a worthy and kind-hearted professor, and which I quitted at the age of eighteen to proceed to the university of Heidelberg. For me, as for most young men, the gay, careless, light-hearted student-life, with its imaginary independence and fantastical privileges, its carouses of Rhenish wine and Bavarian beer, its harmless duels and mock-heroic festivals, at first had strong attractions. And when, after a certain number of joyously-kept terms and pleasant vacation rambles, university diversions began to pall, and I became a less constant attendant in the fencing hall and at the evening potations, I still was detained at Heidelberg--not by love of study, for to study, being destined to no profession, I little applied, but by the force of habit, by the charm of a delightful country, and, more particularly, by the agreeable society I found in a number of families resident in and around the town. Although but moderately attentive to the branches of learning usually pursued at a university, I was not altogether unmindful of my improvement. I busied myself with modern languages, exercised my pencil by sketching the surrounding scenery, and, above all, assiduously cultivated a tolerable talent for music. In this I was particularly successful. Enthusiastically fond of the art, gifted by nature with a good tenor voice, and having chanced upon an excellent instructor, I made rapid progress; and during the latter part of my residence at Heidelberg, no musical party or amateur concert for miles around was deemed complete without me.