Old Solomon was a never-failing source of amusement and of interest to
my friend Lockarby and myself. On gala days he would have us in to dine
with him, when he would regale us with lobscouse and salmagundi, or
perhaps with an outland dish, a pillaw or olla podrida, or fish broiled
after the fashion of the Azores, for he had a famous trick of cooking,
and could produce the delicacies of all nations. And all the time that
we were with him he would tell us the most marvellous stories of Rupert,
under whom he served; how he would shout from the poop to his squadron
to wheel to the right, or to charge, or to halt, as the case might be,
as if he were still with his regiment of horse. Of Blake, too, he had
many stories to tell. But even the name of Blake was not so dear to our
old sailor as was that of Sir Christopher Mings. Solomon had at one
time been his coxswain, and could talk by the hour of those gallant
deeds which had distinguished him from the day that he entered the navy
as a cabin boy until he fell upon his own quarter-deck, a full admiral
of the red, and was borne by his weeping ship's company to his grave in
Chatham churchyard. 'If so be as there's a jasper sea up aloft,' said
the old seaman, 'I'll wager that Sir Christopher will see that the
English flag has proper respect paid to it upon it, and that we are not
fooled by foreigners. I've served under him in this world, and I ask
nothing better than to be his coxswain in the next--if so be as he
should chance to have a vacancy for such.' These remembrances would
always end in the brewing of an extra bowl of punch, and the drinking of
a solemn bumper to the memory of the departed hero.

Stirring as were Solomon Sprent's accounts of his old commanders, their
effect upon us was not so great as when, about his second or third
glass, the floodgates of his memory would be opened, and he would pour
out long tales of the lands which he had visited, and the peoples which
he had seen. Leaning forward in our seats with our chins resting upon