Note (return) — MEMOIR

crossed London-bridge, which at that time was an asylum to the footsore, the pauper, and the weary of heart. The day had fallen, and every thing looked dull and dreary; the foot-path was encumbered by mud, and porters carrying weights, as well as other busy passengers, were jostling each other to obtain a footing on the dirty pavement: a fellow heavy laden came in contact with the royal reefer6 so powerfully, that he took a lee-lurch, and got foul of one of the seats in the arches. "Avast there; luff up, you lubberly rigged son of a gun," cried middy; "couldn't you hail ship before you were aboard of us?" The fellow, however, waddled on; but the middy had to turn about in order to regain his course, when suddenly he beheld a middle-aged figure, perishing with cold, a red night-cap on, an old jacket and trousers, a pair of shoes in rags attached to his legs with a rope's end, no shirt, no stockings, nor any other attire; the face was climate-struck, it had braved the equator and the pole, the battle and the breeze, the scorching heat and the petrifying cold,—it was, as might be expected, thin, and moreover almost lost in a profusion of hair on each cheek, so that it would be difficult for the oldest acquaintance to recognise the features after long absence; nature had made the lips to smile, the eyes to beam in kindness, the fine high forehead to command respect; but time and hardships, disease and disappointment, had quenched the fire of the organ of sight and intelligence, the mirror of the soul,—had prematurely furrowed that front of honest English high spirit and candour, and had taught the lips to fall in dejection and the treasured silence of woe: upon the whole, the figure had something fierce in it, but it was truly manly; the warrior's arms were folded together, and his face, bent towards the ground, was still half up-turned, and seemed to say to rich merchants and venders passing by on foot and in carriages, "There ye are, ye liers upon beds of down, ye feeders upon the poor man's toil; often have you slept secure, and safely enjoyed your wealth, whilst poor Jack rode out the gale, hung on the rigging betwixt life and death, and endured the storm which held him every moment betwixt the chance of clinging to a fragment of the wreck and sinking into eternity: but, now the war is over, smart-money paid for a sharp wound, and neglect and oblivion, are the seaman's portion." The expression of his face and eyes seemed to speak thus; indeed, it spoke volumes; but its mute appeal was lost on the worldlings, who brushed by him, and who, bent on love of gain, scarcely were aware that their fellow-man was starving by their side, too feeble and too much an outcast to work, yet too proud to beg; the middy's heart, however, was of that texture that it leant towards a brother-sailor, meet him where it might, and he naturally looked round at poor Jack on his beam-ends: he had but one penny in his pocket, and that the plaintive voice of a blind woman had drawn, as if by magic, from its deep recess. What was to be done?—for he should have liked to have taken this wreck of a man of war into tow. The reflection caused him to examine more closely the shivering seaman, when a small scar, occasioned by a splinter, on the bridge of the nose, brought to his remembrance Bob Clewlines, who had served in the same ship: the tar recognised him also; but, so far from making himself known to him, he hid his face in his hand: the reefer, however, was resolved to bring him to. "What, Bob Clewlines!" cried he, "do I not hail an old shipmate in you, a quarter-master on board the ——, the bravest heart of oak, the best reefer, and the merriest steersman of the whole ship's crew; and," said he audibly, that every one passing might hear and value fallen courage and fidelity, "and as prime a seaman as ever trimmed a sail, or served a gun; why, what has broke up your old hulk this way?" The man could not find utterance; remembrance of unrequited services and other associations checked him. The middy stretched out his hand, which the broken-hearted sailor ventured not to take. "Come, Bob," cried the other, "no subordination now: we are all equals on life's quarter-deck, and when my fellow-man suffers, he rises a peg in my estimation. Why?—because unfeeling lubbers slight him. Come tip us your fin. Your hand may be dirty, but your soul is as kind as a new sail in a sunny day. I'll show it against any lord's in the land. Come, heave a head; follow me, old tarry breeches; I'll soon set your timbers and rigging to rights; you shall have an entire refit. Come, bear a hand; set all your canvass; it's all in ribbons, I see, and shivers in the wind; but I'll keep out wind and weather for you."