"No, Mary, no, I am going among negresses and foreigners, black and brown girls of all sorts, and do you think I would take up with one of them and leave you?" And Jacob laughed at his own suggestion. "No, that I would not, not to be made port admiral, nor a king on his throne either. Mary, I was a fool to come away and leave you and poor mother, but it's too late now, I must go this cruise. The king himself could not get me off. There's no use asking the captain. Why he would only laugh at me. If he was to let me go, half the ship's company would want to go and marry their sweethearts. I tell you a plain and solemn truth, Mary; but cheer up, dear girl. Never fear, I will be true and faithful to you." Mary was too much occupied with her own grief to think much of Harry. However, she at last turned towards him. "Mr. Tryon," she said, "are you going, too? Surely that cannot be. What shall I tell Miss Mabel?" "Tell her, Mary, what Jacob has said to you. I trust the time will quickly pass. I hope to do my duty faithfully to my king and country, and to obey my captain." Mary was about to ask further questions, but the boatswain's whistle was heard, uttering the stern order for all visitors to leave the ship. Jacob gave Mary an affectionate embrace, and assisted her down the side, Harry especially being very unwilling to detain her lest she should be seen by the captain. She had come away, Jacob told him, having got a holiday for a week to see her friends. The boatman, who knew Jacob, wished him farewell, for though he stared at Harry, he did not appear to recognise him in the dress of a seaman, so different to what he had been accustomed to wear. In a few minutes afterwards the merry pipe was sounding. Harry and others were tramping round with the capstan-bars, and the anchor was slowly hove up to the bows. The proud frigate, under all sail, stood down the Solent toward the Needle passage. Harry turned his aching eyes toward Lynderton as the frigate glided by. Though the sea was bright, the air fresh, and everything round him looked beautiful, his heart sank low, and often and often he bitterly repented the step he had taken. He quickly, however, learned his duty as a seaman, and Captain Everard more than once remarked to the first-lieutenant that he had seldom seen a more active and promising lad. "You speak of Andrew Brown, sir?" was the answer. "Yes, he's one of our pressed men, but he at once seemed reconciled to his fate. He will make a prime seaman." "Curious, I cannot help fancying that I have seen him before," observed the captain, "or else he is very like a lad I know, of a family residing in my part of the country. However, that is fancy." Probably from that moment Captain Everard thought little more of the likeness between Andrew Brown and Harry Tryon.