“None o’ your imporence, Master Tommy; jest you look at me!”

“All right, father,” said I. “I am a-looking at you now!”

“Very good, Tom—one dog one bone! Well, what d’ye see?”

“I see a brave sailor and a gallant defender of his country,” I answered, giving the bow oar I was pulling a vicious dig into the water as I spoke, like as if I were tackling one of the Queen’s enemies; “I see a man who has got no cause to be ashamed of his past life, though he might be getting on in years—you are that, father, you know; and one who has won his medal with four clasps for hard fighting. In real wars, mind you, not your twopenny ha’penny Bombardment of Alexandria business!—aye, I see one who ought to wear the Victoria Cross if he had his rights. That’s what I see, father.”

“Bosh, Tom, none o’ your flummery,” said he, grinning as he always does at the mention of the Egyptian affair which they made such a fuss about, just when I was a little nipper learning to run about, and that old men-o’-warsmen thought all the more ridiculous from its contrast to Admiral Hornby’s rushing the British fleet through the Dardanelles, and stopping the Russians in their march to victory at the very gates of Constantinople, shortly before, in the days of ‘old Dizzy’—which was really a deed to boast of, if any one wanted to talk of the British Lion showing his teeth and waggling his tail, as he did when he ‘meant business’ in the good old days of Nelson! Aye, that was ‘something like,’ father says; and worth all the ‘bronze stars’ in the Khedive’s collection of leather medals! “None o’ your flummery, Tom; you only wants to put me off my course, you rascal, so as to make me forget what I were a-talking about. But I don’t forget, sonny! Look at me, I says, and see what I’ve come to, with my forty year o’ sailorin’ all about the world an’ furrin parts—a poor rhumenaticky chap as is half a cripple, forced to eke out his miserable pension of a bob an’ a tanner a day by pulling a rotten old tub of a boat back’ards and forruds, up and down Porchm’uth Harbo’r, a-tryin’ to gain an honest livin’, an’ jest only arnin’ bread an’ cheese at that!”

“Oh, father!” said I. “How about that rabbit smothered in onions we had yesterday for dinner, and the ‘tidy little sum’ you told me you and mother had in the Savings Bank? Besides that, we’ve bought the freehold of our little house at Bonfire Corner, I know, father, and there’s the bird-shop and all the stock!”

“You knows too much, Master Tom, I’m a-thinking,” he rejoined, scratching his head again, as he always did, as now, when he was in a quandary about anything, especially when any one had got the better of him in an argument, or, as he said, ‘weathered’ on him, and he wasn’t quite prepared with an answer, reaching over the sternsheets of the wherry and dipping the blade of his oar, ready to make a stroke. “But, look out, my lad! I think we’d better be a-going alongside now. Ain’t that a jolly there, signalling to us from the entry-port o’ the old Victory?”

“Aye, father,” said I, for I had seen the marine holding up his hand to summon us before he spoke. “The court-martial must be over sooner than was expected.”

“Not a bit of it, Tom,” he replied, as he and I bent our backs and made the boat spin along towards the old flagship, fetching the gangway at the foot of the accommodation ladder on the starboard side in half a dozen strokes. “The ship’s corporal told me it’d last all day. It’s only them lawyer chaps wanting to get ashore to their lunch, that’s all. Those landsharks be as hungry arter their vittles as they is for their fees, Tom; they be rare hands, them lawyers, for keeping their weather eyes open, and is all on the look-out for whatsomedever they can pick up. They be all fur grabbin’ an’ grabbin’, that they be, or I’m a Dutchman!”

“Really, father?” I said innocently, as I stood up in the bows of the wherry and hung on by a boathook to one of the ringbolts in the side of the old three-decker that towered up above our heads, waiting to help in a couple of gentlemen who came hurrying down the accommodation ladder to take passage with us. “Why, I thought you and mother wanted me to go into a lawyer’s office and become one of those very same sort of chaps!”

“I’d rayther see you an honest sailor, like your father an’ grandfather afore you,” he answered, with some heat, unthinkingly; and then, catching my eye, he grinned, recognising how seriously he had committed himself by this rash utterance after his previous advice respecting the unsatisfactory character of the vocation he now extolled, and he muttered under his breath while lending his arm to assist the gentlemen to pass astern on their jumping into the boat. “Ship my rullocks, you young rascal! Don’t you sit there grinning and winking at me, like a Cheshire cat eatin’ green cheese, thinkin’ no doubt you’ve got to win’ard of me; though, I’m blest, sonny, if I didn’t nearly slip my painter then!”

The rudder of the wherry being shipped, one of the gentlemen took the yoke lines as he sat down in the sternsheets facing father, handling them in a manner that showed he was no novice.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed presently, looking steadily at father, as he steered us aslant the tide so as not to check the way of the boat, while making straight for the pontoon across the stream, which was now running out, like a regular good coxswain. “Aren’t you Tom Bowling?”

“Aye, aye, sir, that’s my rating,” said father, looking at him in his turn. “But I can’t say as how I can place your honour;—though, ship my rullocks, if it ain’t young Mister Mordaunt; ‘Gentleman Jack’ we used to call you on the lower deck aboard the old Blazer—beg pardon for taking the liberty, sir!”

“Yes, I’m that same, Bowling, only grown a bit since then in stature and likewise in years; for none of us can manage to work a traverse on old Father Time and grow younger,” said the other, laughing lightheartedly and showing his white teeth as he stretched out his hand to father in the most cordial way, like a real gentleman, as if he were a friend and fellow-sailor. “I’m very glad to see you again—aye, and looking so hale and hearty, too, old shipmate!”

“So am I to see you, sir,” rejoined father, resting on his oar, while the two exchanged a good grip of their fists; I also stopping pulling, of course, and grinning in sympathy. “Why, I were only talking about you last pension day to Bill Murphy—You remembers Bill; don’t you, sir? He wer’ cap’en of the foretop in the Blazer with us, Mr Mordaunt—a little chap with ginger hair.”

“Oh yes, I recollect Murphy well enough. He was a mad Irishman, always full of fun and mischief,” rejoined the other, smiling at the remembrance of some joke in which the chap of whom they spoke had part. “But you must put a handle to my name, Bowling; I’m posted now.”

“Beg pardon, cap’en, I didn’t know it, in course, or wouldn’t have forgot my manners,” said father, raising his hand in salute; and then, gripping the loom of his oar, he started a long steady stroke towards the pontoon at the foot of the railway jetty, on the Portsea shore, abreast of the old Victory; I following suit, of course. “You won’t mind an old seaman, sir, ’gratulatin’ you, sir, on getting your step so young? Ship my rullocks, why, it do seem but t’other day when you were a mite of a middy along o’ me!”

“Time flies, my man; and if youth were the only bar to our promotion we’d soon be all admirals of the fleet,” said the other, laughing again. “Why, it’s more than twenty years ago, Bowling, since we were in the old Blazer together.”

“Aye, I knows that, Cap’en Mordaunt,” replied father, in his dry way; “an’ I knows, too, that there’s many a