thoroughly seasoned with salt water that it would take a long time
for me to decay."

When they got up to the cottage they found that Jane Langley had got
breakfast prepared. Rashers of bacon were smoking on the table, and a
large tankard of beer stood by, for in those days the use of tea had
not become general in this country.

"Have you heard, mother," Peter Langley said, "that the boy is to
leave us again in forty-eight hours?"

"No, indeed," the old woman said; "but this is hard news. I had hoped
that you would be with us for a bit, my boy, for we're getting on fast
in life, and may not be here when you return."

"Oh, mother! we will not think of such a thing as that," Harry said.
"Father was just saying that he's so seasoned that even time cannot
make much of such a tough morsel; and you seem as hearty as he is."

"Aye, boy," Peter said, "that be true, but when old oak does come
down, he generally falls sudden. However, we won't make our first meal
sad by talking of what might be."

Gayly during the meal they chatted over the incidents of Harry's
voyage to India and back. It was his second trip. The lad had had a
much better education than most boys in his rank of life at that time,
the boatswain having placed him at the age of ten in charge of a
schoolmaster at Portsmouth. When Harry had reached that age Peter had
retired from the service, and had settled down at Hayling, but for two
years longer he had kept Harry at school. Then he had apprenticed him
to a firm of shipowners in London, and one of the officers under whom
Peter had served had spoken to the heads of the firm, so that the boy
was put in a ship commanded by a kind and considerate officer, and to
whose charge he was specially recommended. Thus he had not forgotten
what he had learned at school, as is too often the case with lads in
his position. His skipper had seen that he not only kept up what he
knew, but that he studied for an hour or so each day such subjects as
would be useful to him in his career.

After breakfast the pair again went out onto the sandhills, Peter, as
usual, carrying a huge telescope with him, with which he was in the
habit of surveying every ship as she rounded the west of the island
and came running in through the channel to Portsmouth. Most of the
men-of-war he knew in an instant, and the others he could make a
shrewd guess at. Generally when alone with Harry he was full of talk
of the sea, of good advice as to the la