“I knows,” replied the other, “for I axed the very question when I was up the Dardanelles.  There be a black fellow, a unique they calls him, with a large sword and a bag of sawdust, as always stands sentry at the door, and if so be a woman kicks up a bobbery, why plump her head goes into the bag.”

“Well, that’s one way to make a good woman on her; but as I was saying, Mr Forster, you mustn’t be down in the mouth; a seaman as knows his duty, never cares for leave till all the work be done.  I’d bet a yard of pigtail that Mr Newton—­”

“Is here, my good fellow!” interrupted Newton.  “My dear father!”

Nicholas sprang off his seat and embraced his son.

“My dear, dear boy! why did you not come to me before?  I was afraid that you had been killed.  Well, I’m glad to see you, Newton.  How did you like the West Indies?”

“The East Hinges, you mean, Mr Forster.—­Newton,” continued the old pensioner, wiping both sides of his hand upon his blue breeches, and then extending it—­“Tip us your daddle, my lad; I like to touch the flipper of one who has helped to shame the enemy; and it will be no disgrace for you to grapple with an old seaman, who did his duty as long as he had a pin to stand upon.”

“With pleasure, my friend,” replied Newton, taking the old man’s hand, while the other veteran seized the one unoccupied, and, surveying Newton from top to toe, observed, “If your ship be manned with all such lads as you—­why, she be damned well manned, that’s all.”

Newton laughed and turned to his father.

“Well, father, how are you?—­have you been quite well?  And how do you like your berth here?”

“Why, Newton, I get on much better than I did at Bristol.”

“It be Liverpool he mean, Mr Newton; but your good father be a little damaged in his upper works; his memory box is like a sieve.—­Come, Bill, we be two too many.  When father and son meet after a India voyage, there be much to say as wants no listeners.—­Good-bye, Mr Forster; may you never want a son, and may he never want a ship!”

Newton smiled his thanks to the considerate old pensioners, as they stumped out of the door, and left him alone with his father.  The communications of Nicholas were as concise as usual.  He liked his situation, liked his company, had as much work as he wished for, and had enjoyed good health.  When Newton entered upon pecuniary matters, which he was the sooner induced to do by observing that his father’s coat and smallclothes were in a most ruinous condition, he discovered, that although the old gentleman had provided himself with money from the bankers, during the first year, to purchase a new suit of clothes, latterly he not only had quite forgotten that there were funds at his disposal, but even that he had procured the clothes, which had remained in the chest from the day they had been sent home without having been tried on.

“Dear me! now I recollect, so I did; and I put them upstairs somewhere.  I was busy at the time with my improvement on the duplex.”