is
father's vessels. The shipowner was anxious to see some steady man sail
with his lad; so he asked the Veteran's father to go as mate of a barque
which the son was going to take out to Genoa. The terms offered were so
very tempting that the old man decided to take another short spell of
the sea; and when the Veteran next brought his little sloop on to the
Hard, he found his father had run round to Hull in the barque. The young
captain, of whom the old man had taken charge, behaved very badly during
the southerly trip, and in the end had delirium tremens. During the
whole of the night the madman divided his time between giving
contradictory orders and crying out with fear of the dreadful things
which he said were chasing him. On the night after the vessel brought up
at Hull he staggered aboard, and stumbled into the cabin. Sitting down
at the table, he set himself deliberately to insult his mate, who had
been quietly reading. He called the old man a pig, and asked him why he
had not gone to his sty. Finding that all his insults were received with
good humour, he grew bolder, and at last went round the table and hit
out heavily. A white mark appeared on the mate's cheek where the blow
landed, and in return he delivered a tremendous right-hander full in the
captain's face. The bully was lifted off his feet and fell against the
cabin-door, crashing one of the panels out. He rose, wiped the blood
from his mouth, and went ashore.

The lieutenant of a frigate which was lying in the harbour was ashore
with a press-gang. The drunkard went and declared that the Veteran's
father had been insubordinate, and showed a bruised face in evidence. So
in the grey of the morning the naval officer and half-a-dozen seamen
came under the barque's quarter and climbed aboard. The old man was
walking the deck, being very much perturbed about the last night's
affray, and he grasped the whole situation at once. He picked up a
handspike and got ready to defend himself; but the seamen made a rush,
and a blow with the flat of a heavy cutlass knocked the old sailor
senseless. When he came to himself he found that he was on board the
guardship.

Two days after the Veteran was strolling along the quay in all the glory
of white duck and blue pilot cloth. (Sailors were great dandies in those
days, and every one of the little ports from the Firth to the Foreland
had its own particular fashion in the matter of go-ashore rig.) The
Veteran was going to be