As may be supposed, the general subject of conversation in the berth or
during the night-watches, was home. Those who have never been from
home, can scarcely understand the pleasure seamen experience, who have
been long absent, in simply talking about returning home. There they
expect to find peace, and quiet, and rest, those who love them, and can
sympathise with them, and listen to their accounts of all their
exploits, and dangers, and hardships. Such at that time were my
feelings, and those of my friend Grey, but I am very certain that they
cannot be the feelings of those who have given way to vicious habits,
and whose only expectation is to enjoy their more unbridled indulgence.
The thought of a pure and quiet home can afford no joy to them; they
lose, I may say, one of the chief recompenses which those obtain whose
duty calls them away from home, and all the loved ones there.

Still our hope was deferred. We were, however, the gainers, in one
respect, by this, for we took some of the richest prizes captured on the
station, so that even we midshipmen began to feel that we were persons
of boundless wealth. At length our orders arrived, and the shout ran
along the decks--

"Hurrah, we are homeward-bound!"

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

To England we with favouring gale,
Our gallant ship up Channel steer;
When running under easy sail,
The light blue western cliffs appear.

How often and often have those cheerful lines been sung by young, and
light, and happy hearts, beating high with anticipations of happiness,
and thoughts of the homes they are about to revisit after long years of
absence. Such was the song sung in the midshipmen's berth of the Doris,
as once more our gallant frigate entered the chops of the Channel, and
we were looking forward to seeing again those western cliffs which often
and often we had pictured to ourselves awake, and seen in our dreams
asleep.

I will not dwell on the feeling with which "Sweethearts and wives" was
drunk on the last Saturday evening in the midshipmen's berth as well as
in every mess in the ship; not that the young gentlemen themselves had
any one who could properly be designated as one or the other, but they
might hope to have, and that was the next thing to it.

I thought of poor McAllister, cut down in his early manhood, and of his
poor Mary, and I resolved if possible to fulfil his request, and to go
and tell her about him. It was a task I would gladly have