or breakfast.

I was in such good time, indeed, that old Saint Thomas's clock in High
Street was only just chiming Eight; while the ships' bells over the
water were repeating the same piece of information in various tones and
the shrill steam whistle from the dockyard workshops hard by screeching
its confirmation of the story.

There was no fear of my being late, therefore; so, consoling myself with
this satisfactory reflection, I was making my way to the nearest window
of the coffee-room to look out on the harbour beyond as I had done the
evening before when, like as then, a big bouncing "Bang!" came from the
_Victory_, making me jump back and feel almost as nervous as poor mother
was on the previous occasion.

"Yezsir, court-martial gun, sir, aboard the flagship, sir," said the
wiry little cock-eyed head waiter, who was hopping about the room "like
a parched pea on a griddle," as dad expressed it, stopping to flick the
dust from the mantelpiece with his napkin as he replied to the mute
inquiry he could read in my glance. "Look, sir! They've h'isted the
Jack at the peak, sir, yezsir."

"Oh, yes, I see," said I, as if I had not observed this before and was
perfectly familiar with the signal. "I did not notice it at first."

"No, sir? W'y, in course not, sir, or else ye'd ha' known wot it were,"
answered the sly old fellow, ascribing to me a knowledge of naval
matters which he knew as well as myself I did not possess, thus
pandering, with the ulterior view, no doubt, of a substantial tip, to a
common weakness of human nature to which most of us, man and boy alike,
are prone--that of wishing to appear wiser than we really are!

"But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter,
sir," he continued, "court-martials, sir, isn't wot they used to was.
Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus
Fitzblazes's time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries
on Browndown!

"W'y, sir, b'lieve me or not if yer likes, but there wasn't a mornin'--
barring Sundays in course--as yer wouldn't hear that theer blessed gun
a-firin' for a court-martial, sir, j'est the same as ye heerd j'est now,
sir, yezsir! Ah, them was fine times, they was, for the watermen on
Hardway; for they usest to make a rare harvest a-taking off witnesses
and prisoners' `friends,' as they calls 'em, and lawyers and noospaper
chaps to the flagship, they did. The old chaps called the signal gun