as to move and convince the hardest and most sceptical of the objectors to greatness when manifested in its own ways and not in theirs.
Rajah Brooke is in retirement in England now,—incapacitated by the break-down of his health from returning to his real home in the East. His plans and method of rule are carried on, in a spirit of devout fidelity to him, by relatives and friends; and we may hope that his services will never be lost among the Dyaks, as assuredly the tradition of them will never be.
As for his place in his own country and its history, he is in himself a marking incident in his century. We have in him one more representative of an order of men who had seemed to have passed away, while yet there is no retrograde character about him and his work. We have in the American Filibuster not only a retrograde but a corrupted specimen of the adventurer of the Middle Ages. Walker, in Nicaragua or in Mexico, is a base imitation of the old buccaneer. He not only oppresses and pillages, as the old buccaneers did, and seizes towns and territories like colonising sea-rovers of old; but he does these things under a guise of cant, by means of followers whom he has swindled into the enterprise, and for the sake of extending the area of negro-slavery. Rajah Brooke bears no relation to such a specimen of depraved buccaneering. He gave himself to Sarāwak, instead of seizing Sarāwak for himself. He did not grasp at the reins of government, but put them into the hands of the natives, and showed them how to guide their course. He sacrificed his fortune for them, instead of extorting one from them. It has been the world’s wonder what sort of Christians Cortez and his comrades supposed themselves to be: and the world now sees what sort of a Christian a Knight-Adventurer may be. For the sake of this spectacle we may rejoice that that antique class has had one more Representative Man.
LOST IN THE FOG.
IN TWO CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
In one of the summer months of the year 185—, application was made to a great London Insurance Company to insure the life of Mr. Andrew Macfarlane, of Raw Material Street, Manchester, for a very heavy sum. Mr. Macfarlane was not a young man, being described by himself as between forty and fifty, and the sum was of such an unusual amount, that the Company thought it necessary to use more than ordinary caution; they therefore stipulated upon seeing the gentleman personally, and having him examined by two of their own medical men in their own office in London, in addition to the usual preliminary investigation. Mr. Macfarlane accordingly appeared one morning, looking a most robust and healthy middle-aged gentleman, with a fine, broad, ruddy, close-shaven face, and iron grey hair: the examination was pronounced satisfactory in the extreme. Mr. Macfarlane was a more than usually healthy person, and the policy was granted without delay.
One morning in November of the same year, London was shrouded in one of its densest fogs. That combination of smoke and vapour to be met with in its full perfection in no other part of the globe, pervaded street and river, Fog had reigned supreme over the metropolis the whole of the previous day, and had become so thick at night that foot-passengers had great difficulty in finding their way along the streets; the crossing of a wide street or square looked like diving into some dark and unexplored expanse, all landmarks were swept away, the lamps were scarce visible one from another; experienced Londoners found themselves turning the wrong corners, and the cabs and other vehicles had no chance of reaching their destination, save by adhering to the curbstone.
That November morning the newspapers bore witness to the dangers of the previous day in many a lengthy catalogue of accidents. As morning broke the fog seemed likely to rule another day, but as the sun gained strength he brought with him a fresh breeze, and the fog lifting, like a vast curtain, once more disclosed to the persecuted Londoners the features of their lost city.
Light was pretty well established when a party of river-men were seen carrying the body of a drowned man up the steps of London Bridge. On coming to the top with their ghastly burden, a gentleman in a dark beard and moustaches, who had been watching their movements over the parapet, came up, and looking steadily at the dead man’s face, exclaimed:
“Good God! it’s poor Macfarlane!”
The men stopped; a crowd was present in an instant, as if by magic; and in scarcely less time the tall and unperturbed hat of a policeman was to be observed, calm and stationary above the swaying multitude.
“Do you identify this body, sir?”
“I do.”
“Your name and address, if you please, sir?”
“I will go with you to the station, if you please.”
“The body will go to the dead-house, sir; perhaps you would have no objection to go there with me, first, and witness my removal of the valuables on the person of the deceased.”
The gentleman accordingly accompanied the party, saw the contents of the pocket removed, and the body examined casually. There were no marks of violence upon it, and there was little doubt that it represented one of the victims of the fog, an opinion pretty freely expressed by the bystanders.
The pockets produced little or nothing leading to identification; a watch, with a chain attached to it, a locket containing hair, and ornamented with a blue cross, a purse with money all in sovereigns, a pocket-handkerchief marked in cipher, and a bunch of keys told little.
The next proceeding was to the station-house; the sergeant on duty heard the facts, took possession of the property; put certain questions; took down the gentleman’s name and address—“Mr. Woodley, of Liverpool, now at the Covent Garden Hotel”—and informed him that he would be required at the inquest.
“I shall consider it my duty to attend; but, in the meantime, I must communicate this intelligence to my poor friend’s wife; they came to town only the day before yesterday.”
