the little town running on just as he left it, even down to Quaymaster
Bussa and his dandering ways. Yes, there stood the ancient crane with
its broken-cogged winch--his own initials, carved with his first
clasp-knife, would be somewhere on the beam; and the heap of sand beside
it differed nothing from the heap on which he and his fellows had pelted
one another forty years ago. Certainly the two bollards--the one
broken, the other leaning aslant--were the same over which he and they
had played leap-frog. Yes, and yonder, in the arcade supporting the
front of the "King of Prussia," was Long Mitchell leaning against his
usual pillar; and there, on the bench before the Working Men's
Institute, sat the trio of septuagenarians--Un' Barnicoat, Roper Vine,
Old Cap'n Tom--and sunned themselves; inseparables, who seldom exchanged
a remark, and never but in terms and tones of inveterate contempt.
Facing them in his doorway lounged the town barber, under his striped
pole and sign-board--"_Simeon Toy, Hairdresser_," with the s's still
twiddling the wrong way; and beyond, outside the corner-shop, Mr Rogers,
ship-broker and ship-chandler--half paralytic but cunning yet,--sat
hunched in his invalid chair, blinking; for all the world like a wicked
old spider on the watch for flies.

"Ahoy, there!" Captain Cai hailed, and made across at once for the
invalid chair: for Mr Rogers was his man of business. "Lost no time in
reportin' myself, you see."

Mr Rogers managed to lift his hand a little way to meet Captain Cai's
grasp. "Eh? Eh? I've been moored here since breakfast on the look-out
for 'ee." He spoke indistinctly by reason of his paralysis.
"They brought word early that the _Hannah Hoo_ was in, and I gave orders
straight away for a biled leg o' mutton--_with_ capers--_an'_ spring
cabbage. Twelve-thirty we sit down to it, it that suits?"