rite Cowper wrote about it which I recollect I
learnt by heart when I was a little girl, much smaller than you, Nell.
The lines began thus-- `Toll for the brave, the brave that are no
more,'--don't you remember them; I'm sure you must, Captain?"

"Can't say I do, ma'am," he replied--"poetry isn't in my line. But, as
I was saying, the _Royal George_ heeled over pretty nearly in the same
way as the other one did that I just now told you about; and, I remember
when I was studying at the Naval College in the Dockyard ever so many
years ago, when I was a youngster not much older than you, Master Bob,
being out at Spithead when the wreck of the vessel was blown up, to
clear the fairway for navigation. I've got a ruler and a paper-knife
now at home that were carved out of pieces of her timber which I picked
up at the time."

"How nice!" observed Mrs Gilmour. "A charming recollection, I call
it!"

"Well, I don't know about that," replied the Captain, who seemed a
little bit grumpy, and was fumbling in his pockets without apparently
being able to find the object of which he was in search--"my
recollection is not so good as I would like it!"

On Mrs Gilmour looking at him inquiringly, noticing the tone in which
he spoke, the truth came out.

"The fact is, ma'am, I've lost my snuff-box," he said apologetically to
excuse his snappy answers. "I must have left it in my other coat at
home."

He did not give up the quest, however, but continued to dive his hands
on the right and left alternately into pocket after pocket; until,
suddenly, the cross expression vanished from his face, being succeeded
by a beaming smile, followed by his customary good-humoured chuckle.

"I've found it!" he exclaimed triumphantly, producing the missing box
from the usual pocket in which he kept it, where it had lain all the
time; and, taking a pinch, the Captain was himself again. "By Jove, I
thought my memory was gone!"

The porpoises all this while continued their gambols about the steamer,
now ahead, now astern, now swimming abreast, one after the other,
rolling, diving, and jumping out of the water sometimes in their sport.

They seemed to be having a regular holiday of it; and, tired of leap-
frog, had taken to "follow my leader" or some other game. At any rate,
they did not think much of the _Bembridge Belle_, passing and repassing
and going round her at intervals, as if to show their contempt of a
speed they could so readily eclipse.