The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans by William Gosse Hay

On the 19th there was a banquet to the officers of the bomb-ships at "Hodgson's celebrated Macquarie Hotel," and Captain Hyde-Shaxton and Daunt, of the foot police, found themselves only divided at the table by Lieutenant Cooke, a mutual acquaintance. A rich globe-trotter and SAVANT, Homely O'Crone, who sat on Shaxton's right, claimed much of the Captain's attention during luncheon, more especially as the former did not seem to be in good odour with the Colonial officials about him--neither with old Magruder, the police magistrate, who was grumbling his food in on his right, nor yet with Daunt, who twice ignored his approaches. This gentleman enveloped Shaxton in an excited discussion on navigation, in a rapid, cultivated voice. In the muddle of it, Shaxton laughed--agreeable--jolly--if, for instants at a time, lost and abstracted. He would lean over his plate chuckling as he related some anecdote of his BEAGLE voyage, but his gaze would float away sometimes as though he heard "voices in the wind."

Duty took Cooke away before the speeches, and Shaxton, with a lack of ceremony which would have been brutal if it had not been somehow a part of his Bedouin nature, forsook his excitable friend, and slid talking into Cooke's seat. He seemed, though once he chuckled out a tale, mentally to lean on Daunt. He tittered gloomily.