John had come home from Van Diemen's Land barely a month before, and I
had heard of him as taking a frisk in Liverpool. We asked after him,
among many other places, at the two boarding-houses he was fondest of,
and we found he had had a week's spell at each of them; but, he had gone
here and gone there, and had set off "to lay out on the main-to'-gallant-
yard of the highest Welsh mountain" (so he had told the people of the
house), and where he might be then, or when he might come back, nobody
could tell us. But it was surprising, to be sure, to see how every face
brightened the moment there was mention made of the name of Mr.
Steadiman.

We were taken aback at meeting with no better luck, and we had wore ship
and put her head for my friends, when as we were jogging through the
streets, I clap my eyes on John himself coming out of a toyshop! He was
carrying a little boy, and conducting two uncommon pretty women to their
coach, and he told me afterwards that he had never in his life seen one
of the three before, but that he was so taken with them on looking in at
the toyshop while they were buying the child a cranky Noah's Ark, very
much down by the head, that he had gone in and asked the ladies'
permission to treat him to a tolerably correct Cutter there was in the
window, in order that such a handsome boy might not grow up with a
lubberly idea of naval architecture.

We stood off and on until the ladies' coachman began to give way, and
then we hailed John. On his coming aboard of us, I told him, very
gravely, what I had said to my friend. It struck him, as he said
himself, amidships. He was quite shaken by it. "Captain Ravender," were
John Steadiman's words, "such an opinion from you is true commendation,
and I'll sail round the world with you for twenty years if you hoist the
signal, and stand by you for ever!" And now indeed I felt that it was