walls and the
moats, the gates and the sentinels, the long High Street with the great
government buildings, and the constant rattle of drums and blare of
trumpets; they made my little heart beat quicker beneath my sagathy
stuff jacket. Here was the house in which some thirty years before the
proud Duke of Buckingham had been struck down by the assassin's dagger.
There, too, was the Governor's dwelling, and I remember that even as I
looked he came riding up to it, red-faced and choleric, with a nose such
as a Governor should have, and his breast all slashed with gold. 'Is he
not a fine man?' I said, looking up at my father. He laughed and drew
his hat down over his brows. 'It is the first time that I have seen Sir
Ralph Lingard's face,' said he, 'but I saw his back at Preston fight.
Ah, lad, proud as he looks, if he did but see old Noll coming in through
the door he would not think it beneath him to climb out through the
window!' The clank of steel or the sight of a buff-coat would always
serve to stir up the old Roundhead bitterness in my father's breast.

But there were other sights in Portsmouth besides the red-coats and
their Governor. The yard was the second in the kingdom, after Chatham,
and there was ever some new war-ship ready upon the slips. Then there
was a squadron of King's ships, and sometimes the whole fleet at
Spithead, when the streets would be full of sailors, with their faces as
brown as mahogany and pigtails as stiff and hard as their cutlasses. To
watch their rolling gait, and to hear their strange, quaint talk,
and their tales of the Dutch wars, was a rare treat to me; and I have
sometimes when I was alone fastened myself on to a group of them, and
passed the day in wandering from tavern to tavern. It chanced one day,
however, that one of them insisted upon my sharing his glass of Canary
wine, and afterwards out of roguishness persuaded me to take a second,
with the result that I was sent home speechless in the carrier's cart,
and was never again allowed to go into Portsmouth alone. My father was
less shocked at the incident than I should have expected, and reminded
my mother that Noah had been overtaken in a similar manner. He also
narrated how a certain field-chaplain Grant, of Desborough's regiment,
having after a hot and dusty day drunk sundry flagons of mum, had
thereafter sung certain ungodly songs, and danced in a manner unbecoming
to his sacred profession. Also, how he had afterwards explain