This calm might have remained unbroken for a considerable time but for the entrance of a third seaman, much younger than either of the former, whose appearance in the passage had been received by a round of applause from the children, a hearty greeting from the landlady—though that portly woman, with her handsome face, would not have left her arm-chair to welcome an admiral—and a “good-morrow,” louder, but not more sincere, from Bob himself. It appeared that this guest was well known and also trusted at the Fox and Fiddle, for, entering the public room with a sea-bow and a scrape of his foot on its sanded floor, he called lustily for a quart of strong ale and a pipe, while he produced an empty purse, and shook it in the landlord’s face with a laugh of derision that would have become the wealthiest nobleman in Great Britain. “Ay, lad,” said Bob, shaking his head, but setting before his customer the beer and tobacco as desired. “’Tis well enough to begin a fresh score when the old one’s wiped out; but I saw that purse, with my own eyes, half full of broad pieces at the ebb. See now; you’ve gone and cleared it out—not a blessed groat left—and it’s scarce high-water yet!” “What o’ that, old shiney?” laughed the other. “Isn’t there plenty more to be yarned when them’s all gone? Slack water be hanged! I tell you I’ll have a doubloon for every one of these here rain-drops afore a month’s out. I know where they grows, old man; I know where they grows. My sarvice to ye, mates! Here’s ‘Outward bound and an even keel!’” While he spoke he whirled the rain-drops off his shining hat upon the floor, and nodding to the others, took a long pull at his ale, which nearly emptied the jug; then he filled a pipe, winked at the retiring landlord, and smoked in silence. The others scanned him attentively. He was an active, well-built young fellow of two or three-and-twenty, with foretopman written on every feature of his reckless, saucy, good-looking face—in every gesture of his wiry, loose, athletic limbs. He was very good-looking; his eyes sparkled with fun and his teeth were as white as a lady’s; his hair too might have been the envy of many a woman, clustering as it did in a profusion of curls over a pair of real gold earrings—a fashion now beginning to find considerable favour amongst the rising generation of seamen, though regarded with horror by their seniors as a new and monstrous affectation, proving, if indeed proof were needed for so self-evident a fact, that, as in all previous and subsequent ages, “the service was going to the devil.”