"

"Humph!" snorted out the old sailor, his beady eyes twinkling with fire
and his bushy eyebrows moving rapidly up and down. "If you had seen
Master Bob when he first emerged from the fore-peak of the _Archimedes_
after his tumble through the fo'c's'le and roll amongst the coal-sacks,
you would have thought him, missy, more like Snuffles than ever. The
only drawback to the likeness was that Bob had but two paws instead of
four, and that they were as black as his face!"

"Oh, my!" exclaimed Nellie, shrieking with laughter. "Do you hear that,
mamma?"

"Aye, my dear, I'm not joking," went on the Captain, his face now as
grave as a judge. "Do you know he was so black, that they mistook him
for one of the Christy minstrels when he came into the ward-room
afterwards!"

This finished poor Nell; even Bob, too, joining in the laugh against
himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

TRAWLING OFF THE NAB.

The same evening, while they were all on the pier, listening to the
band, and chatting pleasantly together in the pauses between the music,
Mrs Gilmour turned the conversation upon a matter of extreme interest
to Master Bob, and one concerning which he had been in much doubt of
mind for some time past; although his native diffidence had prevented
him from personally broaching the subject in his own right.

Sitting there within hail of the sea, the soft arpeggio of whose faint
ripple on the shore seemed to harmonise with the louder instrumentation
of the orchestra, which was just then playing a selection from Weber's
"Oberon," the talk naturally drifted into a nautical channel; the old
sailor dilating, to the delight of his listeners, on the charms of a
life afloat and the divine beauty of the ocean, whether in storm or at
rest.

"Aye, there's no life like it," said he. "A life on the ocean wave!"

"It sounds nice in poetry," observed the Irish barrister, who although
full of sentiment, like most of his countrymen, always tried to hide it
under a mask of comedy. "But, I think it must be a very up and down
sort of existence. Too uncertain for me, at all events!"

"Oh, Dugald!" remonstrated his wife. "Why, this morning you were
rhapsodising over the sea, and wishing you were able to spend your brief
life afloat."

"My brief life, indeed!" exclaimed Mr Strong. "It's precious few
briefs I get, or it would be more pleasant. I wish more of 'em would
come in, my dear, to pay for those children's shoes. They've worn out