ion was largely accepted, and the boys all agreed that a jollier
meal they never sat down to than that which was spread on tables in
the farmer's garden. The meal was called tea, but it might have been a
dinner, for the tables were laden with huge pies, cold chicken and duck,
hams, and piles of cakes and tarts of all sorts. Before they started for
home, late in the evening, syllabub and cake were handed round, and the
boys tramped back to Deal in the highest of glee at the entertainment
they had received from the hospitable farmer and his wife.

Great fun had been caused after tea by the farmer giving a humorous
relation of the battle with which his acquaintance with Frank had
commenced, and especially at the threat of Frank to send a bullet
into his eye if he interfered with him. When they left, a most cordial
invitation was given to Frank to come over, with any friend he liked to
bring with him, and have tea at the Oaks Farm whenever he chose to do
so.

CHAPTER III: A TOUGH YARN

"You had a close shave the other night," one of the boatmen remarked to
Frank, as a few days after the adventure he strolled down with Ruthven
and Handcock to talk to the boatman whose boat had been lost, "a very
narrow shave. I had one out there myself when I was just about your
age, nigh forty years ago. I went out for a sail with my father in his
fishing boat, and I didn't come back for three years. That was the only
long voyage I ever went. I've been sticking to fishing ever since."

"How was it you were away three years?" Handcock asked, "and what was
the adventure? Tell us about it."

"Well, it's rather a long yarn," the boatman said.

"Well, your best plan, Jack," Ruthven said, putting his hand in his
pocket and bringing out sixpence, "will be for you to go across the road
and wet your whistle before you begin."

"Thank ye, young gentleman. I will take three o' grog and an ounce of
'bacca."

He went across to the public house, and soon returned with a long clay
in his hand. Then he sat down on the shingle with his back against a
boat, and the boys threw themselves down close to him.

"Now," he began, when he had filled his pipe with great deliberation and
got it fairly alight, "this here yarn as I'm going to tell you ain't no
gammon. Most of the tales which gets told on the beach to visitors as
comes down here and wants to hear of sea adventures is just lies from
beginning to end. Now, I ain't that sort, leastways, I sh