Captain Mugford sleeps in the home of his adoption--the ocean. Five
years after our six months together he sailed from Bristol as boatswain
of a splendid ship for the Pacific. A fortnight after, he was spoken by
a homeward-bound brig, and that was the last ever heard of honest Roland
Mugford, or the ship he sailed in. I hope seas, winds, and
undercurrents, however rough they may have been, left undisturbed the
red bandanna and the short black pipe. And we feel sure that the
mother's prayers were answered, and that the boy who ran away from her
in his youth came back to her,--whither her memory was a beacon light--
the Eternal Harbour, unstirred by storms.

Walter is a man of eminence--a diplomatist--and Harry a merchant, a
cheerful, generous-hearted man, whose name is the synonym of honour, and
whose hands "to do good, and to distribute, forget not."

Drake, who entered the army after travelling in every strange and dim
corner of the globe--frozen up in the Arctic Seas, perspiring in the
interior of Africa, exploring among the western wilds of the Rocky
Mountains, and doing other things adventurous in every out-of-the-way
part--finally went with all his honest, hot zeal to India, where,
fighting his country's battles, he spent many years of his life, and
came back a general and one-legged man. Now he _stumps_ about in this
same library, but manages to take me travelling thousands of never-weary
miles; and many and many a time do we walk, and shoot, and swim, and
race, and fight over and over again that happy time at the cape.

Poor Alfred--the best of all of us--died before his thirtieth year,
nursed by a few devoted Africans, at his missionary station in the
southern Atlantic.

And I, whom the general calls "Vieux Moustache," have finished an old
Boy's Story of "Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors."

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Mugford, by W.H.G. Kingston

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN MUGFORD ***

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