When he got back to Plymouth late in the evening after his talk with Kiah Parker he found every one in a state of great excitement. The landlady of the lodgings he had taken during his stay there was eager to tell him the latest news. A frigate had come into the port just at sundown with a fine prize—a French gun-brig, taken after a stubborn fight in which both vessels had suffered severely. The first lieutenant had brought the ship in, the captain being wounded and disabled, but the whole place was ringing with his praise.
It had been a most brilliant capture, only the greatest daring and most skilful management could have carried it out.
Two brigs had both attacked the English frigate, and she had made a feint of flight and then turned on them and managed to sink one and disable the other. She would have to wait for repairs. So much the good landlady had told before her lodger could ask a question, and when she paused for breath he inquired whether she knew the name of the English ship. Certainly, the Mermaid frigate, Captain Maitland; heaven send he was not badly hurt, poor gentleman! Had there been any loss? Not many killed, she thought, a matter of one or two men, and one officer downed, but a many wounded, they were in hospital; and she branched off into stories of sailor friends of her own, while her lodger tried to remember why the name of the ship and the captain were so familiar to him. It came back to him later in the evening, when he was reading his paper after a solitary supper. It was a midshipman of the Mermaid whom he had nursed in a fever in his far-away West Indian home, and it was the praises of Captain Maitland that the lad was always singing. What a pleasant visitor he had been! What a regretful longing he had left behind him for such another blithe stout-hearted English boy who might call that house his home! His late host wondered if he were in Plymouth, and decided to try and find him out next morning, but one of his fishermen friends came to invite him to go on a two days' cruise, and he accepted readily.
It was a bright day, but there were clouds on the horizon and a fresh breeze springing up; there might be a capful of wind at night, the fisherman said, but the gentleman didn't mind that, he knew. The gentleman said he would like it all the better, and he won the men's hearts as they went along before the wind by his questions about navigation, about rocks and shoals and sandbanks, and the adventures which they were ready enough to tell over again. And their guest had stories of his own to tell, about marvellous adventures with mutinous slaves in the West Indies, and of how he had escaped from their hands to be taken by a French privateer, and was freed by a storm in which the ship went down. And in the interest of the tales and the weather and the fishing he almost forgot about the excitement of the day before, for the bringing in of a prize was a common enough event in war time.
In the afternoon the wind freshened to something like a gale; the fishermen were too busy and alert for talk, and their guest was left to his own thoughts. And then he found himself going back to his conversation with the old sailor. What a good cheery old fellow he was, and what a happy view of life he managed to take after all his ups and downs! And one piece of advice which he had given so frankly to his new acquaintance kept running in the stranger's head, it had been there ever since, though he wouldn't let himself think of it. 'It's wonderful,' Kiah had said, 'how women folks keep a man's place warm for him,' and involuntarily he found himself thinking how it would be if he should test the old man's words on his own account.
'No, it's nonsense for me,' he thought; 'she probably doesn't remember that she ever saw me, and since then she can't have heard very attractive accounts. No, no, better not turn up to be an embarrassment to them if they're alive, for even that I don't know.'
Just then one of the fishermen caught his attention by a remark to his companion: 'Ay, poor old Kiah'll take it hard, such a work as he made about him; but after all he couldn't look for better, only it's hard like when the young uns go.'
'Do you know Kiah Parker?' asked the stranger.
'Ay, surely sir, everybody knows Kiah. Poor old chap, he'll be breaking his heart over his young master, as he calls him, for I doubt 'twas him was drowned off the Mermaid in the tussle the other day.'
'Drowned, was he? Is it certain?' asked the visitor, with sudden interest.