and curses, I sailed from the island. Not a single writ has been heard of since in the Westernport district.
"They call me," said old Dodge, evidently highly gratified at the cognomen, "the Bum Perisher; and I am too; for although the last fellow down failed to catch me, he caught a fever which he took back with him, and it killed him in a fortnight. I have thought since whether I didn't leave him one night too long on the island; but whether or not, he was only a bailiff."
The two friends could not quite reconcile the extraordinary nonchalance Dodge exhibited at the poor fellow's fate with the apparent goodness of his disposition; but the reader must consider that Dodge looked on bailiffs as his natural enemies, and treated them accordingly.—Expecting no quarter himself, he gave none.
"If the breeze holds," said Dodge, "we shall soon be home, for near to the shore stands my hospitable mansion—that is to say, when I have anything upon which to display hospitality, as it fortunately happens just now, unless the rats have bored into my flour-bag, and the wild dogs got at my beef-barrel. Now I dare say after all I have told you, you think me a queer fish — indeed, I am disposed to think so myself sometimes."
"I've been all sorts of things. I was once," he continued, "a midshipman—and on getting a little property of my own (I didn't save it out of my pay," he said impressively), "I cut the water for the woods, and buried myself for a time in the forests of one of the western states of America; but the Yankees were too slow for me, so I sold off all my traps, and one fine morning turned up in the salubrious colony of Australia Felix. My present residence is a building in the semi-demi-savage style, designed and executed by myself. It is surrounded by park-like lands, on which great mobs of kangaroos roam in
