ng emblem of unswerving fatherly love.

I could not away with the old man's look, it was so wretched, so
helpless, yet so fond--and was typed to my fancy so strongly by his
little boat pursuing, with a hopeless constancy over waves too rough for
it, the huge and disregarding ship; so, with my breast full, even to
suffocation with mingled emotions, I went down to my berth, and, laying
my head upon the table, and covering my face with my hands, I pretended
to sleep. The cruel torture of that half-hour! I almost thought the
poacher, with all his misery, still blessed in having a father's
love--'twas then that I felt intensely the agony of the desertion of my
own parent--the love that had been denied to me to give to my own
father, I lavished upon the white-headed old man. In imagination I
returned with him to his desolate home; I supported his tottering steps
over the threshold, no longer musical with an only son. I could fancy
myself placing him tenderly and with reverence in his accustomed chair,
and speaking the words of comfort to him in a low voice, and looking
round for his family Bible--and the sister, doubtless she had many
sources of consolation; youth was with her--life all before her--she had
companions, friends, perhaps a lover; but,--for the poor old man! At
that moment, I would have given up all my anticipations of the splendid
career that I fancied I was to run, in order to have gone and have been
unto the bereaved sire as a son, and to have found in him a father.

But nobody could make a sailor of Reuben Gubbins, and Reuben had no idea
of making a sailor of himself. It was in vain that the boatswain's mate
docked the long tails of his blue coat (such things were done in the
navy at that time), razeed his top-boots into seamen's shoes, and that
he had his smock-frock reduced into a seaman's shirt. The soil hung
upon him, he slouched over the deck, as if he were walking over the
furrows of ploughed land, and looking up into the rigging, as if he saw
a cock-pheasant at roost upon the rattlins. Moreover, he could talk of
nothing else excepting "feyther," and "our Moll," and he really ate his
bread (_subintellige_ biscuit) moistened with his tears (if tears can
moisten such flinty preparations), for he was always whimpering. For
the sake of the fit of romance that I felt for his father, I took some
kind notice of this yokel afloat. I believe, as much as it lay in his
nature, he was grateful for it, for