s fully taken up by the housekeeper, in whose
satisfied smile she saw a perfect recognition of the reasons for her
action of the previous evening. She got up from her chair, and with a
stateliness which her brother-in-law thought somewhat misplaced, took
her daughter's arm, and slowly left the room, her departure being the
signal for a general breakup. By twos and threes the company drifted
slowly up the road in her wake, while Captain Barber, going in the
other direction, accompanied Captain Nibletts and party as far as the
schooner, in order that he might have the opportunity of saying
a few well-chosen words to Mr. Green on the subject of precipitancy.

"If it 'adn't been for me tipping 'im the wink, so as to let him know
what line 'e was to go on when I came down, where should I 'ave been?"
he demanded of Captain Nibletts.

And that astonished mariner, with a helpless shake of his head, gave it
up.

CHAPTER XV.

The Blue Posts, Chelsea, is an old-time public-house pleasantly situated
by the river, with an extensive connection amongst gentlemen's servants,
'busmen, and other skilled judges of good beer, the subtle and delicate
perfume of which liquor pervades the place from cellar to basement, and
has more than once taken the policeman on duty to the back door, under
the impression that something wanted looking into.

To some men imprisonment in such a place would have been little short
of ecstasy. In the heat of summer they would have sat in the cool
cellar amid barrels of honest beer; in winter, they would have led
the conversation cosily seated around the taproom fire. For exercise,
profitable employment at the beer-engine in the bar; for intellectual
exercise, the study of practical chemistry in the cellar.

To Captain Fred Flower none of these things appealed. He had visited
the cellar certainly--in search of subterranean exits; he had sat in
the tap-room--close to the open window; but his rabid desire to get away
from the place and never see it again could not have been surpassed by
the most bitter teetotaler that ever breathed.

His greatest trouble was with Porson, whose limpet-like qualities were
a source of never-failing concern to the unfortunate mariner. Did he
ascend to the drawing-room and gaze yearningly from the windows at
the broad stream of Father Thames and the craft dropping down on the
ebb-tide to the sea, Uncle Porson, sallow of face and unclean of collar,
was there to talk beery r