"
Dick Holland, the speaker, was a lad of some fifteen years of age. His
father, who was captain of a fine East Indiaman, had sailed from
London when he was nine, and had never returned. No news had been
received of the ship after she touched at the Cape, and it was
supposed that she had gone down with all hands; until, nearly three
years later, her boatswain, Ben Birket, had entered the East India
Company's office, and reported that he himself, and the captain, had
been cast ashore on the territories of the Rajah of Coorg; the sole
survivors, as far as he knew, of the Hooghley.
After an interview with the Directors, he had gone straight to the
house at Shadwell inhabited by Mrs. Holland. She had left there, but
had removed to a smaller one a short distance away, where she lived
upon the interest of the sum that her husband had invested from his
savings, and from a small pension granted to her by the Company.
Mrs. Holland was a half caste, the daughter of an English woman who
had married a young rajah. Her mother's life had been a happy one; but
when her daughter had reached the age of sixteen, she died, obtaining
on her deathbed the rajah's consent that the girl should be sent to
England to be educated, while her son, who was three years younger,
should remain with his father.
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