iant vainglorious little gun-boat
going out all the way to China by herself, giving herself the airs of a
seventy-four, requiring boats to be sent on board her, as if we
couldn't have stowed her, guns and all, on our poop, and never crowded
ourselves. A noble transport, with 53 painted on her bows, swarming
with soldiers for India, to whom we gave three times three. All these
things have faded from my recollection in favour of a bright spring
morning in April.

A morning which, beyond all others in my life, stands out clear and
distinct, as the most memorable. Jim Buckley shoved aside my cabin door
when I was dressing, and says he,--"Uncle Jeff, my Dad wants you
immediately; he is standing by the davits of the larboard quarterboat."

And so I ran up to Sam, and he took my arm and pointed northward. Over
the gleaming morning sea rose a purple mountain, shadowed here and
there by travelling clouds, and a little red-sailed boat was diving and
plunging towards us, with a red flag fluttering on her mast.

"What!" I said,--but I could say no more.

"The Lizard!"

But I could not see it now for a blinding haze, and I bent down my head
upon the bulwarks--Bah! I am but a fool after all. What could there
have been to cry at in a Cornish moor, and a Falmouth pilot boat? I am
not quite so young as I was, and my nerves are probably failing. That
must have been it. "When I saw the steeple," says M. Tapley, "I thought
it would have choked me." Let me say the same of Eddystone Lighthouse,
which we saw that afternoon; and have done with sentiment for good. If
my memory serves me rightly, we have had a good deal of that sort of
thing in the preceding pages.

I left the ship at Plymouth, and Sam went on in her to London. I
satisfied my soul with amazement at the men of war, and the breakwater;
and, having bought a horse, I struck boldly across the moor for
Drumston, revisiting on my way many a well-known snipe-ground, and old
trout haunt; and so, on the third morning, I reached Drumston once
more, and stabled my horse at a little public-house near the church.

It was about eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning; nevertheless, the
church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. I was a
little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where my father
and mother lay, and then passed on to the simple headstone which marked
the resting place of John Thornton and his wife, I brushed through the
docks and nettles, toward