Toddles, Mellins, and I, we were just fizzing over with happiness, and stayed up all the night, and had a bet as to who would spot the Eddystone first, the officer of the watch on board that P. & O. letting us stay in a corner of the bridge so long as we didn’t make a row and move about much. Toddles saw it first, so Mellins and I had to stand a jolly good blow-out at the very first opportunity. I was all right now, as right as rain, and had been quite well for a fortnight at least. We ran into Plymouth Sound early in the morning; they sent out Admiralty tugs to take all our people ashore. We three midshipmen got leave till night, and the three of us had a splendid time. Mellins swore that he had never eaten so much in his life, and we all hoped that he hadn’t—even he was rather sorry for himself afterwards. They let us go on leave next day. The Admiralty had given us a month as a special reward (whoop! wasn’t that luck?), and it was just splendid going home. My Pater lives in Hampshire, and has a jolly snug house right in the country, miles away from the railway. Effie, my little sister, met me in a dog-cart and drove me home. She looked as smart as a new pin, but you can’t imagine how shabby I was, for, somehow or other, I had lost all my plain clothes, and had to borrow odds and ends from Toddles, and they were much too small for me, and my boots were Purser’s Crabs[#], done up with string. But it didn’t matter a cent. [#] Boots of Admiralty pattern supplied to the men from the Paymaster’s stores. Effie made her pony go like the wind, I can tell you, and my battered old uniform tin case went jumbling into the road—it couldn’t damage it any more, though—and we had to lash it in. You feel such a man when you get into the train, and, well—when you get out at the sleepy old station and drive along the same old road and meet all the village people you’ve known ever since you can remember, you feel quite young. We met Toby, the stable-boy, half a mile from the house, leading the farm horses back from watering, and I couldn’t resist this, made Effie stop, jumped on the back of one of them, and raced her home. She simply flew along, but I overhauled her and won easily, tearing up the drive; and though there were the Pater and my Mother and everybody at the door waiting for me, I couldn’t stop the horse, and he turned sharply into the stable-yard and pitched me off into a bush. Jolly old bush! I’d been pitched into it fifty times. We sailor men look forward to that day coming home all the time we are away, and it’s worth it, I can tell you. I’d brought everyone of them a present of sorts—a curio from Hong-Kong, or something I had picked up on the island—a rifle from One Gun Hill for the Pater, and a great piece of shell which had burst aboard the _Laird_ for my Mother, and she couldn’t get it out of her head that that was what had wounded me. Then and there I had to show them all my wounds—I had four, you know.