About midday on the fourth day, as we were passing through a village, it chanced that a drove of sheep blocked up the road. The caravan stopped and I managed to get down from the waggon, with my gaoler, to see what was happening in the road. The sheep were very wild, and the drover was a boy who did not know how to drive them. The way was blocked for a good ten minutes, so that I had time to look about me. While we waited, a donkey-cart drove up, with two people inside it, dressed in the clothes of naval sailors--white trousers, blue, short, natty jackets (with red and green ribbons in the seams), and with huge clubbed pigtails under their black, glazed hats. One of them was evidently ill, for he lay back against the backboard and did not speak. I noticed also that he had not been to sea for a long time, as his beard was long and unkempt. The other, who drove the cart, was a one-legged man, very short and broad, with a thick black stubble on his cheeks. He was a hearty person with a voice like a lion's roar. They had rigged up Union Jacks on the donkey's blinkers, they had a pilot jack upon the shaft, and a white ensign on a flagpole tied to the backboard. The body of the cart was all sprigged out with streamers of ribbon as thick as horses' tails, and there were placards fixed to the sides of the donkey's collar. They were clumsily scrawled as follows:-- Pity the Braiv English Seamen, Wonded in the Wars, Help them as cannot help theirselves, We have Bled for our nativland. Nelson and Bronte. This wonderful conveyance pulled up among the sheep. The one-legged man stood upright in the cart, called for three cheers, and at once began to roar out the never-ending ballad of the battle of Belle Isle:-- At the battle of Belle Isle, I was there all the while, etc., etc. Everybody clustered round to listen, and to admire the turnout. I could not get very near to the cart, because of the press; but I noticed quite suddenly that the sick man was staring rather hard at me from under the rim of his glazed hat, which was jammed down over his eyes. The eyes seemed familiar. There was something familiar in the figure, covered up, as it was, with the rough beard, and with a ship's boat-cloak. It reminded me of Marah, somehow, and yet it could not possibly be Marah; and yet the man was staring hard at me. A countryman came out of an inn with a mug of drink for the singer, who checked his song at about the hundred-and-fiftieth stanza, to take the mug with a "Thank ye, mate," and hand it to his sick friend. The sick man took the mug with his left hand, opening the fingers curiously, and still looking hard at me. My heart gave a great jump, for there were three blue rings tattooed on one of the fingers. The man waved his mug towards me. "Hoo, hoo, hoo," he cried, imitating an owl with his weak voice. "Hoo, hoo, hoo." Then he clapped his right hand across his mouth to warn me to be silent, and drank, with a bow to the giver.