"Can't say I do, ma'am," he replied--"poetry isn't in my line. But, as I was saying, the _Royal George_ heeled over pretty nearly in the same way as the other one did that I just now told you about; and, I remember when I was studying at the Naval College in the Dockyard ever so many years ago, when I was a youngster not much older than you, Master Bob, being out at Spithead when the wreck of the vessel was blown up, to clear the fairway for navigation. I've got a ruler and a paper-knife now at home that were carved out of pieces of her timber which I picked up at the time." "How nice!" observed Mrs Gilmour. "A charming recollection, I call it!" "Well, I don't know about that," replied the Captain, who seemed a little bit grumpy, and was fumbling in his pockets without apparently being able to find the object of which he was in search--"my recollection is not so good as I would like it!" On Mrs Gilmour looking at him inquiringly, noticing the tone in which he spoke, the truth came out. "The fact is, ma'am, I've lost my snuff-box," he said apologetically to excuse his snappy answers. "I must have left it in my other coat at home." He did not give up the quest, however, but continued to dive his hands on the right and left alternately into pocket after pocket; until, suddenly, the cross expression vanished from his face, being succeeded by a beaming smile, followed by his customary good-humoured chuckle. "I've found it!" he exclaimed triumphantly, producing the missing box from the usual pocket in which he kept it, where it had lain all the time; and, taking a pinch, the Captain was himself again. "By Jove, I thought my memory was gone!" The porpoises all this while continued their gambols about the steamer, now ahead, now astern, now swimming abreast, one after the other, rolling, diving, and jumping out of the water sometimes in their sport. They seemed to be having a regular holiday of it; and, tired of leap- frog, had taken to "follow my leader" or some other game. At any rate, they did not think much of the _Bembridge Belle_, passing and repassing and going round her at intervals, as if to show their contempt of a speed they could so readily eclipse. "Do you often see them here playing like this?" asked Nellie of the Captain, who was also looking over the side. "Is that the way they always swim?" "No, missy," said he, with all his old geniality, "not often, though they pay us a visit now and then in summer when so inclined. Their coming now through Spithead is a sign that there's going to be a change of wind." "Oh!" cried Nell wonderingly. "How strange!" "Yes, my dear," went on the old sailor, smiling as he looked down in her puzzled face upturned to his, "I'm not joking, missy, as you think. Those fellows are regular barometers in their way; and, if you note the direction towards which they are seen swimming when they pass a ship at sea, from that very point wind, frequently a gale, may be shortly expected."