. We have got her compasses, and the old flag which
flew at the peak through the whole voyage, at home now. It was my
father's own flag, and his fancy to have it always flying. More
than half the men were killed, or badly hit--the dear old father
amongst the rest. A ball took off part of his knee cap, and he
had to fight the last six hours of the action sitting in a chair
on the quarter-deck; but he says it made the men fight better
than when he was among them, seeing him sitting there sucking
oranges.

"Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave
him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a
splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade, which
hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I
asked him to give me his old service sword, which used to hang by
the other, and he gave it me at once, though I was only a lad of
seventeen, as he would give me his right eye, dear old father,
which is the only one he has now; the other he lost from a
cutlass wound in a boarding-party. There it hangs, and those are
his epaulettes in the tin case. They used to lie under my pillow
before I had a room of my own, and many a cowardly down-hearted
fit have they helped me to pull through, Brown; and many a mean
act have they helped to keep me from doing. There they are
always; and the sight of them brings home the dear old man to me
as nothing else does, hardly even his letters. I must be a great
scoundrel to go very wrong with such a father.

"Let's see--where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well, my father got
his box and sword, and some very handsome letters from several
great men. We have them all in a book at home, and I know them by
heart. The ones he values most are from Collingwood, and his old
captain, Vincent, and from his cousin Nelson's Hardy, who didn't
come off very well himself after the war. But my poor old father
never got another ship. For some time he went up every year to
London, and was always, he says, very kindly received by the
people in power, and often dined with one and another Lord of the
Admiralty who had been an old messmate. But he was longing for
employment; and it used to prey on him while he was in his prime
to feel year after year slipping away and he still without a
ship. But why should I abuse people, and think it hard, when he
doesn't? 'You see, Jack,' he said to me the last time we spoke
about it, 'after all I was a battered old hulk, lame and half
b