size. His ship, as I afterwards found out, had not been paid
off, but he had obtained a fortnight's leave of absence, while she was
refitting. We were all very sociable together, without there being the
least idea, on the part of my sister and myself, with whom we were in
company, when in rolled old Ben the Whaler.

"Sarvice to you," said Ben, nodding to my father. "Tommy, get me a pipe
of 'baccy."

"Here's pipe and 'baccy too, messmate," replied my father. "Sit down,
and make yourself comfortable, old chap."

"Won't refuse a good offer," replied Ben, "been too long in the sarvice
for that--and you've seen sarvice too, I think," continued Ben, looking
my father full in the face.

"Chop from a French officer," replied my father; after a pause, he
added, "but he didn't live to tell of it."

Ben took one of the offered pipes, filled, and was soon very busy
puffing away, alongside of my father.

CHAPTER FIVE.

MY FATHER AND MOTHER MEET AFTER AN ABSENCE OF SIX YEARS. SHE DISCOVERS
THAT HE IS NO LONGER A COXSWAIN BUT A BOATSWAIN'S MATE.

While my father and Ben are thus engaged, I will give the reader a
description of the latter.

Ben was a very tall, broad-shouldered old fellow, but stooping a little
from age: I should think he must have been at least sixty, if not more;
still, he was a powerful, sinewy man. His nose, which was no small one,
had been knocked on one side, as he told me, by the flukes (i.e., tail)
of a whale, which cut in half a boat of which he was steersman. He had
a very large mouth, with very few teeth in it, having lost them by the
same accident; which, to use his own expression, had at the time
"knocked his figure-head all to smash." He had sailed many years in the
whale fisheries, had at last been pressed, and served as quarter-master
on board of a frigate for eight or nine years, when his ankle was broken
by the rolling of a spar in a gale of wind. He was in consequence
invalided for Greenwich. He walked stiff on this leg, and usually
supported himself with a thick stick. Ben had noticed me from the time
that my mother first came to Fisher's Alley; he was the friend of my
early days, and I was very much attached to him.

A minute or two afterwards my father pushed the pot of porter to him.
Ben drank, and then said--

"Those be nice children, both on 'em--I know them well."

"And what kind of a craft is the mother?" replied my father.

"Oh! why, she's a little queer at ti