Now it happened that the wealthiest shipowner of the little port had a very wild and unsteady son, who was a ship captain and sailed one of his father’s vessels.  The shipowner was anxious to see some steady man sail with his lad; so he asked the Veteran’s father to go as mate of a barque which the son was going to take out to Genoa.  The terms offered were so very tempting that the old man decided to take another short spell of the sea; and when the Veteran next brought his little sloop on to the Hard, he found his father had run round to Hull in the barque.  The young captain, of whom the old man had taken charge, behaved very badly during the southerly trip, and in the end had delirium tremens.  During the whole of the night the madman divided his time between giving contradictory orders and crying out with fear of the dreadful things which he said were chasing him.  On the night after the vessel brought up at Hull he staggered aboard, and stumbled into the cabin.  Sitting down at the table, he set himself deliberately to insult his mate, who had been quietly reading.  He called the old man a pig, and asked him why he had not gone to his sty.  Finding that all his insults were received with good humour, he grew bolder, and at last went round the table and hit out heavily.  A white mark appeared on the mate’s cheek where the blow landed, and in return he delivered a tremendous right-hander full in the captain’s face.  The bully was lifted off his feet and fell against the cabin-door, crashing one of the panels out.  He rose, wiped the blood from his mouth, and went ashore.

The lieutenant of a frigate which was lying in the harbour was ashore with a press-gang.  The drunkard went and declared that the Veteran’s father had been insubordinate, and showed a bruised face in evidence.  So in the grey of the morning the naval officer and half-a-dozen seamen came under the barque’s quarter and climbed aboard.  The old man was walking the deck, being very much perturbed about the last night’s affray, and he grasped the whole situation at once.  He picked up a handspike and got ready to defend himself; but the seamen made a rush, and a blow with the flat of a heavy cutlass knocked the old sailor senseless.  When he came to himself he found that he was on board the guardship.

Two days after the Veteran was strolling along the quay in all the glory of white duck and blue pilot cloth. (Sailors were great dandies in those days, and every one of the little ports from the Firth to the Foreland had its own particular fashion in the matter of go-ashore rig.) The Veteran was going to be married as soon as his next trip was over; and on this particular evening he intended to stroll through the lanes and see his sweetheart, who was a farmer’s daughter.  A fine southerly breeze was blowing, and a little fishing smack crossed the bar and ran up the harbour, lying hard over with press of sail.  The Veteran had the curiosity to wait until the little