take him home. We travelled up to London by the same train; but by
the time I had managed to get through with my examination the ship
had sailed on her next voyage without him, and, instead of joining
her again, I went by request to see my old commander in his home.
This is the only one of my captains I have ever visited in that
way. He was out of bed by then, "quite convalescent," as he
declared, making a few tottering steps to meet me at the sitting-
room door. Evidently he was reluctant to take his final cross-
bearings of this earth for a Departure on the only voyage to an
unknown destination a sailor ever undertakes. And it was all very
nice--the large, sunny room; his deep, easy-chair in a bow window,
with pillows and a footstool; the quiet, watchful care of the
elderly, gentle woman who had borne him five children, and had not,
perhaps, lived with him more than five full years out of the thirty
or so of their married life. There was also another woman there in
a plain black dress, quite gray-haired, sitting very erect on her
chair with some sewing, from which she snatched side-glances in his
direction, and uttering not a single word during all the time of my
call. Even when, in due course, I carried over to her a cup of
tea, she only nodded at me silently, with the faintest ghost of a
smile on her tight-set lips. I imagine she must have been a maiden
sister of Mrs. B- come to help nurse her brother-in-law. His
youngest boy, a late-comer, a great cricketer it seemed, twelve
years old or thereabouts, chattered enthusiastically of the
exploits of W. G. Grace. And I remember his eldest son, too, a
newly-fledged doctor, who took me out to smoke in the garden, and,
shaking his head with professional gravity, but with genuine
concern, muttered: "Yes, but he doesn't get back his appetite. I
don't like that--I don't like that at all." The last sight of
Captain B- I had was as he nodded his head to me out of the bow