Not only my coat became public property, but those gay friends parted my other raiment between them, and I well remember, after I had a new supply of linen, etc. from home, expostulating with Frankston, my black major-domo, because I had nothing to wear, and receiving his answer in reply—"Well, sar, what can do? Mr. Hurst and Mr. Doering take all master's shirts." To back up his assertion, he showed me Arthur Doering's weekly wash just arrived, consisting of one sock and one white tie. Poor Arthur, he is gone,—a light-hearted, cheery, devil-may-care youngster who spent every penny he made. He was one of my pursers, but had persistently bad luck; he was captured twice, wrecked once, and chased back once. When on shore I made him head of the entertaining department, for which he was well fitted, as no one could mix a better cocktail or sing a more cheery song than he could. This was the cheery side of our Nassau life, but it had its reverse one, consisting of hard work, constant anxieties and worries. As my memory takes me back to those jovial but hard-working days of "camaraderie" it is melancholy to think how many of those friends have gone before: Mrs. Murray-Aynsley, Mrs. Hobart and her husband Hobart Pasha; Hugh Burgoyne, one of the navy's brightest ornaments, who was drowned while commanding the ill-fated _Captain_; Hewett, who lately gave up command of the Channel Fleet only to die; old Steele, the king of blockade-running captains; Maurice Portman, an ex-diplomatist; Frank Vizitelly, whose bones lie alongside those of Hicks Pasha's in the Soudan; Lewis Grant Watson, my brother agent; Arthur Doering, one of my loyal lieutenants, and a host of old Confederate friends, are all gone, and I could count on my fingers those remaining of a circle of chums who did not know what care or fear was, and who would have stood by each other through thick and thin in any emergency. In fact my old friends Admiral Murray-Aynsley and Frank Hurst are almost the only two living of that companionship.