ess
affected than myself. "Good-bye! May God bless and keep you, and in
His own good time bring you in health and safety back to us! Amen."

A quick convulsive hand-clasp, a last hungry glance into the loving face
and the sorrow-dimmed eyes which looked so longingly down into mine, and
with a hardly-suppressed cry of anguish I tore myself away, staggered
blindly down the slipway, tumbled into the boat, and, as gruffly as I
could under the circumstances, ordered the boatman to put me on board
the _Daphne_.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE TRUTH ABOUT FITZ-JOHNES.

"Where are we going, Tom?" I asked, as the boatman, an old chum of
mine, proceeded to step the boat's mast. "You surely don't need the
sail for a run half-way across the harbour?"

"No," he answered; "no, I don't. But we're bound out to Spithead. The
_Daphne_ went out this mornin' at daylight to take in her powder, and I
'spects she's got half of it stowed away by this time. Look out for
your head, Mr Dick, sir, we shall jibe in a minute."

I ducked my head just in time to save my glazed hat from being knocked
overboard by the jibing mainsail of the boat, and then drew out my
handkerchief and waved another farewell to my father, whose fast-
diminishing figure I could still make out standing motionless on the
shore, with his hand shading his eyes as he watched the rapidly moving
boat. He waved back in answer, and then the intervening hull of a ship
hid him from my view, and I saw him no more for many a long day.

"Ah, it's a sorry business that, partin' with friends and kinsfolk when
you're outward-bound on a long cruise that you can't see the end of!"
commented my old friend Tom; "but keep up a good heart, Mr Dick; it'll
all be made up to yer when you comes home again by and by loaded down to
the scuppers with glory and prize-money."

I replied somewhat drearily that I supposed it would; and then Tom--
anxious in his rough kindliness of heart to dispel my depression of
spirits and prepare me to present myself among my new shipmates in a
suitably cheerful frame of mind--adroitly changed the subject and
proceeded to put me "up to a few moves," as he expressed it, likely to
prove useful to me in the new life upon which I was about to enter.

"And be sure, Mr Dick," he concluded, as we shot alongside the sloop,
"be sure you remember _always_ to touch your hat when you steps in upon
the quarter-deck of a man-o'-war, no matter whether 'tis your own ship
o