from going off. While she was waiting for old
Tom Swatridge, who had been with grandmother and her for years to bring
along her baskets of vegetables from the market, a gentleman came
hurrying down the Hard, and seeing father getting the wherry ready,
said:

"I want you to put me aboard my ship, my man. She's lying out at
Spithead; we must be off at once."

"It's blowing uncommon fresh, sir," said father. "I don't know how
you'll like it when we get outside; still there's not a wherry in the
harbour that will take you aboard drier than mine, though there's some
risk, sir, you'll understand."

"Will a couple of guineas tempt you?" asked the stranger, thinking that
father was doubting about the payment he was to receive.

"I'll take you, sir," answered father. "Step aboard."

I was already in the boat, thinking that I was to go, and was much
disappointed when father said, "I am not going to take you, Peter, for
your mother wants you to help her; but just run up and tell Ned Dore I
want him. He's standing by the sentry-box."

As I always did as father bade me, I ran up and called Ned, who at once
came rolling along down the Hard, glad of a job. When he heard what he
was wanted for he stepped aboard.

"I hope to be back in a couple of hours, or three at furthest, Polly,"
father sang out to mother, as he shoved off the wherry. "Good-bye,
lass, and see that Peter makes himself useful."

Mother waved her hand.

"Though two guineas are not to be picked up every day, I would as lief
he had stayed in the harbour this blowing weather," she said to herself
more than to me, as on seeing old Tom coming we stepped into her boat.

When father first went to sea, Tom Swatridge had been his shipmate, and
had done him many a kind turn which he had never forgotten. Old Tom had
lost a leg at Trafalgar, of which battle he was fond of talking. He
might have borne up for Greenwich, but he preferred his liberty, though
he had to work for his daily bread, and, I am obliged to say, for his
daily quantum of rum, which always kept his pockets empty. He had
plenty of intelligence, but he could neither read nor write, and that,
with his love of grog, had prevented him from getting on in life as well
as his many good qualities would otherwise have enabled him to do. He
was a tall gaunt man, with iron-grey hair, and a countenance wrinkled,
battered, and bronzed by wind and weather.

When he first came ashore he was almost as sobe