She had sailed from Bordeaux on April 20, in company with five other transports bound for Plymouth, and her putting into Falmouth to repair her steering-gear came as a surprise to the town, which at once hung out all its bunting and prepared to welcome her poor passengers home to England with open arm.  A sorry crew they looked, ragged, wild eyed, and emaciated, as the boats brought them ashore at the Market Stairs to the strains of the Falmouth Artillery Band.  The homes of the most of them lay far away, but England was England; and a many wept and the crowd wept with them at sight of their tatters, for I doubt if they mustered a complete suit of good English cloth between them.

Stimcoe, I need scarcely say, had given us a whole holiday; and Stimcoe’s and Rogerses met in amity for once, and cheered in the throng that carried the home-comers shoulder high to the Town Hall, where the Mayor had arrayed a public banquet.  There were speeches at the banquet, and alcoholic liquors, both affecting in operation upon his Worship’s guests.  Poor fellows, they came to it after long abstinence, with stomachs sadly out of training; and the streets of Falmouth that evening were a panoramic commentary upon the danger of undiscriminating kindness.

Now at about five o’clock I happened to be standing at the edge of the Market Stairs, watching the efforts of a boat’s crew to take a dozen of these inebriates on board for the transport, when I heard my name called, and turned to see Mr. George Goodfellow beckoning to me from the doorway of the Plume of Feathers public-house.

“It’s Coffin,” he explained.  “The old fool’s sitting in the taproom as drunk as an owl, and I was reckonin’ that you an’ me between us might get him home quiet before the house fills up an’ mischief begins; for by the looks of it there’ll be Newgate-let-loose in Falmouth streets to-night.”

I answered that this was very thoughtful of him; and so it was, and, moreover, providential that he had dropped in at the Plume of Feathers for two-pennyworth of cider to celebrate the day.

We found Captain Coffin seated in a corner of the taproom settle, puffing at an empty pipe and staring at vacancy.  “Drunk as an owl” described his condition to a nicety; for at a certain stage in his drinking all the world became mirk midnight to him, and he would grope his way home through the traffic at high noon in profound, pathetic belief that darkness and slumber wrapped the streets; on which occasions the dialogue between him and the barber’s parrot might be counted on to touch high comedy.  I knew this, and knew also that in the next stage he would recover his eyesight, and at the same time turn dangerously quarrelsome.  If Mr. Goodfellow and I could start him home quietly, he would have reason to thank us to-morrow.