I left the Plato at the quarantine ground, going to the Sailor's Retreat. Here the physician told me I never could recover the use of my limb as I had possessed it before, but that the leg would gradually grow stronger, and that I might get along without crutches in the end. All this has turned out to be true. The pain had long before left me, weakness being now the great difficulty. The hip-joint is injured, and this in a way that still compels me to rely greatly on a stick in walking. At the Sailor's Retreat, I again met Mr. Miller. I now, for the first time, received regular spiritual advice, and it proved to be of great benefit to me. After remaining a month at the Retreat, I determined to make an application for admission to the Sailor's Snug Harbour, a richly endowed asylum for seamen, on the same island. In order to be admitted, it was necessary to have sailed under the flag five years, and to get a character. I had sailed, with two short exceptions, thirty-four years under the flag, and I do believe in all that time, the nineteen months of imprisonment excluded, I had not been two years unattached to a ship. I think I must have passed at least a quarter of a century out of sight of land.[17] I now went up to New York, and hunted up captain Pell, with whom I had sailed in the Sully and in the Normandy. This gentleman gave me a certificate, and, as I left him, handed me a dollar. This was every cent I had on earth. Next, I found captain Witheroudt, of the Silvie de Grasse who treated me in precisely the same way. I told him I had _one_ dollar already, but he insisted it should be _two_. With these two dollars in my pocket, I was passing up Wall street, when, in looking about me, I saw the pension office. The reader will remember that I left Washington with the intention of finding Lemuel Bryant, in order to obtain his certificate, that I might get a pension for the injury received on board the Scourge. With this project, I had connected a plan of returning to Boston, and of getting some employment in the Navy Yard. My pension-ticket had, in consequence, been made payable at Boston. My arrival at New York, and the shadding expedition, had upset all this plan; and before I went to Savannah, I had carried my pension-ticket to the agent in this Wall street office, and requested him to get another, made payable in New York. This was the last I had seen of my ticket, and almost the last I had thought of my pension. But, I now crossed the street, went into the office, and was recognised immediately. Everything was in rule, and I came out of the office with fifty-six dollars in my pockets! I had no thought of this pension, at all, in coming up to town. It was so much money showered down upon me, unexpectedly.