"Do you often see them here playing like this?" asked Nellie of the
Captain, who was also looking over the side. "Is that the way they
always swim?"

"No, missy," said he, with all his old geniality, "not often, though
they pay us a visit now and then in summer when so inclined. Their
coming now through Spithead is a sign that there's going to be a change
of wind."

"Oh!" cried Nell wonderingly. "How strange!"

"Yes, my dear," went on the old sailor, smiling as he looked down in her
puzzled face upturned to his, "I'm not joking, missy, as you think.
Those fellows are regular barometers in their way; and, if you note the
direction towards which they are seen swimming when they pass a ship at
sea, from that very point wind, frequently a gale, may be shortly
expected."

"I hope we're not going to have another storm," said Nellie, thinking of
their late experience. "I don't like those gales."

"No, no, not so bad as that now, I think," he replied, chuckling away.
"There probably will be only a slight shift of wind from the western
quarter, whence it is now blowing, to the eastward, whither the
porpoises are now making off for, as you can see for yourself."

So it subsequently turned out.

The "sea-pigs," as the Captain had at first jocularly termed them, bade
good-bye to the steamer and its passengers when they had got a little
way beyond No Man's fort, and were approaching shoal water, with an
impudent flick of their flukey tails in the air as they went off,
shaping a straight course out towards the Nab light-ship, as if bound up
Channel.

They had all been so occupied watching the porpoises that they had not
noticed the rapid progress the steamer had been making towards her first
port of call on the other side of the Solent; and so, almost at the same
moment that the Captain called Nellie's attention to the last movements
of the queer fish as they vanished in the distance, she shut off her
steam and sidled up to Seaview pier.

"Who's for the shore?" cried out the skipper from his post on the
paddle-box, as soon as the vessel had made fast, and the "brow," or
gangway, was shoved ashore for the passengers to land, without any
unnecessary delay. "Any ladies or gents for Seaview?"

The majority of those on board at once quitted the steamer, amongst them
being our quintet.

As they were stepping on to the pier, however, a slight difficulty arose
in connection with one of their number.

It was about Rov