Mr. Blake; "if we only had some of their
fo'castle songs we should know more about it. I'm afraid they had
no Dibdin."

"I wish you would turn one of my father's favorite songs into
anapaests for him," said Hardy.

"What are they?" said Blake.

"'Tom Bowling,' or 'The wind that blows, and the ship that goes,
and the lass that loves a sailor.'"

"By the way, why shouldn't we have a song?" said Tom.

"What do you say, Captain Hardy?"

The Captain winced a little as he saw his chance of expounding
his notion as to triremes slipping away, but answered:

"By all means, sir; Jack must sing for me though. Did you ever
hear him sing 'Tom Bowling!'"

"No, never, sir. Why, Hardy, you never told me you could sing."

"You never asked me," said Hardy, laughing; "but if I sing for my
father, he must spin us a yarn."

"Oh yes; will you, sir!"

"I'll do my best, Mr. Brown; but I don't know that you'll care to
listen to my old yarns. Jack thinks everybody must like them as
well as he, who used to hear them when he was a child."

"Thank you, sir; that's famous. Now Hardy, strike up."

"After you. You must set the example in your own rooms."

So Tom sang his song. And the noise brought Drysdale and another
man up, who were loitering in quad on the lookout for something
to do. Drysdale and the Captain recognised one another, and were
friends at once. And then Hardy sang "Tom Bowling," in a style
which astonished the rest not a little, and as usual nearly made
his father cry; and Blake sang, and Drysdale and the other man.
And then the Captain was called on for his yarn; and, the general
voice being for "something that had happened to him," "the
strangest thing that had ever happened to him at sea," the old
gentleman laid down his pipe and sat up in his chair with his
hands on his stick and began.

THE CAPTAIN'S STORY

It will be forty years ago next month since the ship I was then
in came home from the West Indies station, and was paid off. I
had nowhere in particular to go just then, and so was very glad
to get a letter, the morning after I went ashore at Portsmouth,
asking me to go down to Plymouth for a week or so. It came from
an old sailor, a friend of my family, who had been Commodore of
the fleet. He lived at Plymouth; he was a thorough old
sailor--what you young men would call "an old salt"--and couldn't
live out of sight of the blue sea and the shipping. It is a
disease that a good many of us take who ha