ack with satisfaction. The next day I
sailed for Liverpool.

Many strange and curious coincidences have occurred to me during my
life. Two days before the _Drake_ was ready for sea, having failed to
gain any tidings of Peter, I was standing on the quay--work being over--
in the evening, with my hands in my pockets, just taking a look at my
future home, when I observed a boat-load of men landing from a sloop
which had lately brought up in the river. By their cut I knew that they
were men-of-war's men. Several of them I saw had been wounded, and,
judging by their shattered frames, pretty severely handled. One was a
tall thin man. The sleeve on his right side hung looped up to a button,
and he leaned over on the opposite side, as if to balance himself. I
looked eagerly in his face, for I doubted not I knew his figure. It was
Peter Poplar himself! I sprung eagerly forward. Captain Helfrich's
appearance had made me feel old, but Peter's weather-beaten countenance
and grizzly hair reminded me that my own manhood must be waning. For a
moment I do not think he knew me. He had thought me dead--killed by the
French fishermen, or murdered in prison. At all events he had heard
nothing of me from the moment I was carried off in the fishing-boat.
How kindly and warmly he shook my hand with his remaining one!

"I've lost a flipper, Jack, you see," said he, sticking out his stump.
"I never mind. It was for the sake of Old England; and I have got a
pension, and there's Greenwich ready for me when I like to bear up for
it. There's still stuff in me, and if I had been wanted, I'd have kept
afloat; but as I'm not wanted, I'm going to have a look at some of my
kith and kin, on whom I haven't set eyes since the war began. Many of
them are gone, I fear. So do you, Jack, come along with me. They will
give you a welcome, I know."

I told him how sorry I was that I could not go, as I had entered aboard
the whaler; but I spent the evening with him, and all the next day; and
he came and had a look at the _Drake_, and Captain Carr was very glad to
see him, and told him that he wished he had him even now with him. I
cannot say how much this meeting with my old friend again lightened my
heart; still I felt ashamed that I should have been in a trader, and
away from one who had been more to me than a father, while he was nobly
fighting the battles of our country. He had bravely served from ship to
ship through the whole of the war