I had been looking hard at the old sailor, whose eye just then falling on me, he recognised me at once as a brother salt.
“What, Jerry Dix!” I exclaimed; he looked at me very hard. “Don’t you know me, old ship? have you forgotten little Ben Truscott?”
“What, Ben, my boy! Give us your flipper, old chum. I thought as how I had seen you afore when my blinkers first caught sight of you, but I didn’t like to make a wrong landfall,” he exclaimed.
We shook hands heartily. I was truly glad to see the old man again.
“I see that you have become a warrant officer,” he said, eyeing my uniform. “That’s better nor nothing, though I did think as how you’d have been higher up the ratlines. And are you at anchor hereabouts?”
I told him that I was living in the neighbourhood, and begged him to come at once to my cottage and see my missus, and have a talk about old times.
“In course I will, Ben,” he answered. Then recollecting his audience, he thought that some apology was necessary for leaving them so abruptly; turning round, therefore, and eyeing his model of the Royal George, as he called her, though she was more like a frigate than a line-of-battle ship, he said—
“You’ll excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but you see as how I’ve fallen in with an old ship, who I’ve known as man and boy these twenty years, so I must just now keep him company; but I’ll come back to-morrow and finish that there stave I was a-singing, and spin you more of my wonderful yarns, if you’ll just be good enough to come here and meet me; now mind, my little dears, bring plenty of coppers; and you, my pretty girls, bring something in your purses for poor Jack; I never takes no money from ugly ones—it’s a rule of mine, it’s wonderful too how few I ever see’s; so good-bye, and blessings on all of you; and now, Ben, we’ll up anchor and make sail.”
Jerry on this unshipped his model from the stand, which he took under his arm, while he placed the vessel on his shoulder, and with a stout stick in his hand came stumping on alongside me.
“Well, Jerry, I am truly glad to see you,” I said; “what have you been doing with yourself since we parted?”