ed in boarding, which
had divided the whole left side of his face, from the eyebrow to the
chin. This gave him a very fierce expression; still he was a
fine-looking man, and his pigtail had grown to a surprising length and
size. His ship, as I afterward 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
dis-covers 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 quartermaster
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 afterward my fat