" replied
the Captain, leading the way down the companion and an interminable
series of other ladders afterwards, as if they were descending to the
kelson, the space getting all the narrower and darker as they went down.
"They took him below--to die!"

Here, in a small, confined apartment, which Bob's father said looked
"like the condemned cell at Newgate," and whose sole apparent advantage,
as the Captain explained, was in its being below the water-line, and
therefore the only safe place in a ship before the days of torpedoes and
submarine warfare, he went on to tell the children, the hero breathed
his last; his dying moments eased by the knowledge that he had done his
duty to his country and cheered by the news that the foe was vanquished,
Hardy making him smile by saying how many ships of the line had struck
their colours already or been destroyed. Nell shivered.

"Let us go upstairs," she said, in a very depressed tone, in keeping
with the melancholy associations of the place. "Let us go upstairs!"

The Captain laughed out at this.

"You'd make a sailor faint, if he heard you ever use that expression!"
he cried. "The idea of speaking about `upstairs' on board a ship, and
your uncle a sailor, too, missy!"

"What should I say?" she asked, looking into his face as well as the dim
light would permit. "What should I say instead?"

"Why, `on deck,' of course," he replied. "We've got no stairs on board
ship. They're either `companion-ways' or `ladders,' up one of which
we'll go now, if you like!"

So saying, he led the way on deck as he had down below, taking them all
into the ward-room under the poop, where they now saw various relics of
the hero, besides letters and orders in his writing, which were framed
and hung round the cabin like pictures.

Bob, whose calligraphy was none of the clearest or most legible, had the
benefit of a little moral lesson here from his father, who seemed to
take a mean advantage of the fact of Nelson writing so well with his
left hand after he lost his right; but Master Bob evaded the issue very
well by saying that "when he was similarly circumstanced," he would try
and write as well, too!

"Bravo!" cried the Captain, as they left the ship, going down the
"accommodation-ladder," which, as he was careful to tell Nellie, was not
a staircase either, although outside the ship. Then, turning to her
father he added, chuckling-- "That boy of yours, Strong, is a regular
chip of the