Happiness at home—War breaks out again—Pressgangs abroad—Mysterious appearance of Charley Iffley—His unaccountable conduct—Anecdotes about smugglers—The old couple and their lost son—Sea-yarns.

No happiness could be more complete than ours, and I saw no reason why it should not be permanent. Happy it undoubtedly is that we do not see the dark clouds of adversity gathering in the horizon, yet it would be wiser in men if they would still recollect that, however bright the sky and fine the weather, storms may arise, and thick mists may overshadow them—perhaps sent as punishments, perhaps in mercy to try and purify them. I was actively engaged all day in the duties of my office, and in the evening, when I returned home, I was welcomed by the smiles of my wife, and the cordial kindness of Aunt Bretta. I desired no change—I should have been content to live the same sort of life to the end of my days. I had a few little rubs and annoyances to contend with in my employment, but I did not allow them to vex me, and went on steadily doing my duty, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left.

War with France had again broken out, and England was making every effort to renew the struggle with the numerous foes which her prosperity and greatness had won for her. A difficulty existed then, as now, in manning the navy, and the pressgangs were always hard at work endeavouring to secure by force or stratagem the necessary crew for the ships.

I knew that I was not exempt from the risk of being taken, but as I dressed in shore-going clothes, and as I was not likely to meet any of my old shipmates or other people who knew me to have been a seaman, I had little fear on the subject. Had I been single and without the ties of home, I would gladly have once more gone afloat to serve my country; but how could I be expected to tear myself from all I loved on earth to do duty before the mast among rough and uneducated men, subject to all the rigours of the naval discipline of those days? I talked the subject over with my uncle.

“If the time comes when every man who can handle a rope is wanted, I shall be the first to say ‘Go,’” said he. “Till then, my boy, stay at home, do your duty, and look after your wife.”

I was too glad to follow his advice. There was no grass growing in the streets of Portsmouth in those days. The place swarmed with seamen and officers; troops were marching in and out; carriages-and-four were dashing down from London; bands were playing; the hotels swarmed with visitors come to see their friends off; ships were being commissioned and fitted out with unwonted rapidity; and all was life, activity, and energy. I now and then, on my way home, took a walk up High Street, for the amusement of observing the bustling, laughing, talking, busy throng.

One evening, as I turned to go back, my eye fell on the countenance of a man whose features I felt sure I knew. In an instant I recollected that they were those of Charles Iffley. Forgetting all I had heard to his disparagement, I was going to follow him, when he turned into a cross street among a crowd who were looking on at some itinerant tumblers, and I lost sight of him. I felt very sorry, for I should have been glad to have shaken him again by the hand and invited him to our house. My wife and aunt used constantly to walk out a little way on the common to meet me.

Two days after that, when they met me, they told me that, in the morning, as they were returning home, they had suddenly encountered Charles Iffley. He knew them at once, but did not speak. He stopped for an instant, stared hard at them, and then moved on. When, however, they reached our house door, they observed that he had followed them at a distance and remarked where they had gone in. Just as they had finished their account, the very person we were speaking of appeared at the further end of the road coming towards us. Directly, however, he saw us, he stopped short and looked at me with an astonished and inquiring gaze. He remained long enough, apparently, to ascertain positively who it was. At first he evidently was in doubt. He had heard of my death, and believed that I was dead, I concluded, and that when he saw me alive, and, as he might have suspected, married to the very woman who had refused to become his wife, he at first could not trust his senses.

My impulse was immediately to run forward to meet him, but my wife pressed my arm so tightly that I could not leave her.

“No, no, do not go,” she whispered. “I do not like his look. He means us mischief.” She must have felt very strongly, I knew, before she could have given way to such an expression. Of course, I yielded to her wish, though it went much against my feelings to turn away from my old associate, ill as I had too much reason to think of him. I could not help agreeing with my wife, as I watched him, that I did not like his look. There was something very evil in his expression as he watched us proceeding towards our home, and I could no longer have any doubt that he recognised me. I never before had seen his countenance wear so malignant an expression, and I feared, not without reason, that even at that moment he was plotting to do us some mischief. A picture I had once seen was forcibly recalled to my memory. It represented Satan watching our first parents in Paradise, and when he is envying them the happiness he can never enjoy, he is considering how he may the most effectually destroy it.

When we got home, we talked the matter over. I did not express my own suspicions to my wife, as they could not fail to agitate her, but I endeavoured rather to make light of it, and to appear as if I hoped, should Charles Iffley feel any desire of revenge, that he would be unable to effect it. I felt regret, also, that I had not hurried after Iffley. Whatever were his feelings, I thought that I might perhaps have turned his heart to better thoughts by talking of bygone days and of our early friendship. “Well, it may not yet be too late,” I thought to myself; “I will seek him out and try to persuade him to discard those feelings of jealousy and envy which are now influencing him.” When, however, I mentioned my intentions to Uncle Kelson, he rather laughed at my notion.

“An idle, conceited young puppy. What business has he to interfere with you or yours?” he exclaimed. “Because a girl, of whom he is utterly unworthy, does not choose to have anything to say to him, is he to set himself up and to look daggers at any man she may happen to marry? Let him alone. Let him go his own gait, as your Aunt Bretta would say. He’ll find a rope long enough to hang himself, depend on it.”

My uncle thought he was giving good advice, but even at the time I felt that better is given elsewhere. “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” I felt that if I could have met with Iffley, I might have heaped coals of fire on his head. I might have softened his heart, just as the contents of a pot are melted by piling up coals, not only around it, but on the very head or top of it. I did not do what I felt and knew was right, and the result of my neglect will be seen.

Aunt Bretta was more indignant than any of us with Iffley. “If he does come to the door, in my opinion, he ought to be turned away!” she exclaimed. “The idea of a person whom I knew as a little boy, glad to receive a slice of gingerbread, giving himself such airs! I have no notion of it.” This was very severe for Aunt Bretta, whose heart was kindness itself.

On making inquiries of the servant, she discovered that a man exactly answering his description had, while they were out, knocked at the door and asked all sorts of questions.

“She could not mind what exactly,” she said. “They were about Mr Wetherholm. Where he had come from! When he had got married? What he was doing? And all sorts of such like things.” After I had heard this account of the servant girl, I could not help feeling somewhat suspicious of Iffley’s object. The mere asking them was very natural, and had he come frankly forward to meet us, I should not have entertained any ill thoughts of him; but now, in spite of all my resolution, I could not help dreading that he contemplated doing me some mischief or other. Still I did my best to get rid of such thoughts of an old friend, for they were not pleasant.

When the evening came, I forgot all about the matter. Old Jerry Vincent looked in, and several other friends, among them two former shipmates of Uncle Kelson’s, and anecdotes and stories innumerable were told. We got on the subject of smuggling. In those days it was certainly not looked on in its proper light, and a smuggler, if he was bold and daring, was considered a very fine fellow. Most of our guests were Hampshire or Isle of Wight men, and had been personally acquainted with many of the smugglers in their day, and might, perhaps, not have refused to purchase any of the goods they had to offer.

“Some of you may have known Jim Dore?” began Jerry.

One or two nodded.

“I thought so,” said Jerry. “Well, then, when he began the work he was very young, and there wasn’t a bolder or more daring hand in the trade. We were boys together, and a braver fellow or better seaman never stepped. He was a Yarmouth man, born and bred, just inside the Needles there. There was a large family of them. He wasn’t always as prudent as he might be, and one day he and the cutter he was in was taken with three hundred tubs on board. Of course he was sent to serve his Majesty. When he found that there was no help for it, he vowed that he would do his duty like a man, and he kept his word.

“He was sent aboard a brig of war employed in looking after smugglers, and though before she had never taken one, now scarcely a month passed that through his means she did not make a prize.

“Once upon a time the brig attacked a large armed smuggler, the crew of which had vowed that they never would be taken alive. There was a desperate fight for more than three hours, and in the end the smugglers kept their word, for they went down with colours flying, under the guns of the brig which was just about to board them. On this occasion, as on every other, Dore behaved so bravely that the captain put him on the quarter-deck, and if he had chosen to follow it, there was the road open to him to become an admiral. But you know there are people who cannot give up habits, so to speak, born and bred with them, as one may say.

“Well, Dore’s time of servitude was up for the smuggling affair, and soon after that the brig put into Portsmouth harbour. The next day Dore got leave to go and see his friends, so he hired a wherry, and got ready for a start for Yarmouth. Just as he was shoving off, I saw him and asked him for a cast down there, as I had some friends in those days in the same place. Now, though he was an officer with a cocked hat on his head, and a sword by his side, I knew that he was in no way proud, at all events. He told me to jump into the boat, by all means. On our way down I asked him if he was going to be long away from his ship.

“‘Long away, do you say?’ he answered, in an indignant tone. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Vincent, it will be long, I’m thinking, before I go back again. I’ve been made an officer of, it’s true, but I haven’t been treated as one or looked on as one, because I wasn’t born a gentleman, and slavery in a cocked hat I, for one, will not bear.’

“In that way he talked till we got pretty nearly down to Yarmouth. At last he worked himself up into a regular rage, for he was a passionate man, do you see.

“‘Give us a knife, some one of you,’ he sang out.

“I handed him mine. When he got it, he began cutting off the buttons from his coat. Then he unbuckled his sword, and took off his hat. He jumped up, and holding all the things together, as it were in a lump, he hove them away into the sea as far from him as he could, uttering at the same time a loud and deep curse. ‘There goes the last link of the chain that binds me to slavery!’ he exclaimed. ‘Now, my lads, I’m once more Jim Dore, the bold smuggler.’

“The men in the boat thought what he had done was very fine, and so did I in those days, and so we all cheered him over and over again. When he landed at Yarmouth, every one turned out to welcome him as if he had been an admiral just come home after a great victory; and certainly the people did make much of him. Those Yarmouth men are great smugglers, there’s no doubt about it. I don’t think, however, myself, as I did in those days. Dore was a brave man, and it’s a great pity he had not been taught better, and he might have been an ornament to the service he deserted.

“When his leave was up, and he did not return, an officer with a boat’s crew was sent to look for him. He got notice of their coming, and got stowed out of the way, for there were plenty of people to help him. He had to keep in hiding for a long time, and often, I dare say, he wished himself back aboard the brig. When the war was over he took to smuggling again, and he soon got command of a large cutter. At last he and some other Yarmouth men went away in her, and from that day to this have never been heard of. It is supposed that the cutter was run down or foundered in a tremendous gale of wind, which sprung up soon after she was last seen.”

One of our friends who came from Poole in Dorsetshire, told us a very good story, when Jerry Vincent and one or two others sang out in chorus, “Howe! howe! howe!”

I asked what they meant.

“That is what we always say to a Poole man,” answered Jerry. “Did you never hear tell of the Poole man and the owl?”

I told him that I never had, and asked him for the story.

“Well, you must know that once upon a time there was a homeward-bound Poole man just coming up Channel, and not far off the land, when, the night being somewhat dark, do ye see, an old owl flew by ‘Howe! howe! howe!’ cried the owl.

“The master, who had been dozing aft, thinking all the time, exactly as many another man does, that he was wide awake, just heard the sound as he roused up, and fancied that another skipper was hailing him.

“‘From Newfoundland!’ he sang out, rubbing his eyes, and dreaming that he saw the strange ship abeam.

“‘Howe! howe! howe!’ hooted the owl again.

“‘With fish,’ answered the Poole man.

“‘Howe! howe! howe!’ once more cried the old owl, as he was flying off.

“‘Over Poole bar with the next tide, please the pigs,’ sang out the skipper at the top of his voice, for fear those in the other craft wouldn’t otherwise hear him. Nothing would ever persuade him that he hadn’t been talking all the time with the skipper of some outward-bound craft.

“That’s all very well, and it is not a bad story, and may be true, or it may not; but you Hampshire men are not all of you so very clever,” answered Mr Bexley, our Poole friend, who had himself been skipper of a merchantman. “Have none of you ever heard speak of Botley assizes, eh?”

I asked him what he meant.

“Why,” he answered, “you know Botley isn’t very far from Southampton. Once upon a time a party of young chaps belonging to Botley were returning from a merry-making of some sort, and as it happened, all of them but one were more than three sheets in the wind. For some reason or other, nothing would make this one touch a drop of liquor. As they were walking along they began to jeer him, and at last they declared that he had been guilty of a capital offence, because he had let the glass pass by, and they agreed that they would try him. Well, they came to a place near a wood, where there were a number of trees cut down, and there they all sat round, and the accused was placed in the middle. The most drunk of the party was chosen as judge, and the others were the counsel, some to accuse and the others to defend him.

“The poor fellow tried to get away, but his friends would not let him. He, of course, had nothing to say for himself, except that he did not choose to drink, and the upshot of his trial was that he was condemned to be hung.

“Unfortunately one of them had a rope with him, and without more ado they ran up the culprit to the nearest tree. To be sure, they did intend to put the rope round his waist, but they were too drunk to know exactly what they were about, and by mistake slipped it, Jack Ketch fashion, round his neck. Having done this wise trick, they all ran away, shrieking with laughter at the cleverness of their joke.

“They were very much surprised to find, the next morning, that the poor fellow was missing. At last they went out to look for him, and found him hanging where they had left him, but as dead as a church door.

“So, gentlemen, you see that the people in those parts are very clever chaps, and if you take them at their own value, there are none to be found like them in all the world. I have another story for you to prove this.

“One day a poor Jew fell into the Itchen.

“‘Oh, shave me! shave me! vil no one shave me?’ he sang out; but of a............