navigation, the intricacies of which eluded his own fuddled brain.
But for the present he could only talk of trivialities, and
especially of the barber's parrot, for which he had conceived a
ferocious hate.

"I'll wring his neck, I will!" he kept repeating. "I'll wring his
neck one o' these days, blast me if I don't!"

I took my leave that evening in no wise eager to repeat the visit;
and, in fact, I repeated it but twice--and each time to find him in
the same sullen humour--between then and May 11, the day when the
_Wellingboro'_ transport cast anchor in Falmouth roads with two
hundred and fifty returned prisoners of war.

She had sailed from Bordeaux on April 20, in company with five other
transports bound for Plymouth, and her putting into Falmouth to
repair her steering-gear came as a surprise to the town, which at
once hung out all its bunting and prepared to welcome her poor
passengers home to England with open arm. A sorry crew they looked,
ragged, wild eyed, and emaciated, as the boats brought them ashore at
the Market Stairs to the strains of the Falmouth Artillery Band.
The homes of the most of them lay far away, but England was England;
and a many wept and the crowd wept with them at sight of their
tatters, for I doubt if they mustered a complete suit of good English
cloth between them.

Stimcoe, I need scarcely say, had given us a whole holiday; and
Stimcoe's and Rogerses met in amity for once, and cheered in the
throng that carried the home-comers shoulder high to the Town Hall,
where the Mayor had arrayed a public banquet. There were speeches at