But Peter, whose eyes had been roving over the surrounding crowd, suddenly, to the medico’s astonishment, shouting,—‘The boss, by G—d!’ rushed through the people, and, regardless of appearances, seized a gentleman’s hand and shook it frantically, exclaiming,— ‘Oh, Mr Forrest, sir, don’t you know me? I’m Peter, sir—Peter Barlow, from the ole station. I’ve been shanghaied an’ locussed away to sea, an’ I wants to git back home again!’ Mr Forrest was more astonished than Peter at such a meeting. Matters, however, were soon arranged. Peter went on to Colombo in the _Barcelona_, and, in a fortnight, joining another boat, duly arrived at Wicklow Downs, whence he has never since stirred. And, if the reader chance one day to journey thither, he may hear at first hand this story, embellished with breezy Bush idioms and phrases that render it infinitely more graphic and stirring a version, but which, somehow, do not read well in type. ‘EX SARDANAPALUS.’ ‘Make it eight bells! Go below, the starboard watch!’ A few minutes later, and eight men sat on eight sea-chests, looking hungrily across at one another. Between them lay an empty meat-kid.[1] In a box alongside were some biscuits, black and honeycombed with weevil-holes. Dinner was over in the _Sardanapalus’_ fo’c’stle, but still her starboard watch glared hungrily at each other. [Footnote 1: Small wooden tub.] ‘I’ve lost two good stone since I jined this starvation hooker!’ presently growled one. ‘I ain’t never full, and I kin feel them cussed worms out o’ the bread a-crawlin’ about in my stummick like so many snakeses.’ ‘Same ’ere, matey,’ chimed in another. ‘A mouthful o’ salt horse an’ a bite o’ rotten bread for breakfus, ditto for dinner, an’ a soldier’s supper;[2] with lime-juice an’ winegar chucked in, according to the Hack,[3] ain’t to say fattenin’.’ [Footnote 2: A smoke and a drink of water.] [Footnote 3: Merchant Seamen’s Act.] ‘That’s wot’s the matter, when the skipper finds the ship,’ remarked a third. ‘Yer gets yer whack, an’ ye gits nae mair, as the Scotchies has it.’ ‘We doesn’t even get that itself,’ put in another, who was sitting on the edge of his bunk. ‘That yaller hound of a steward gives short weight all round. Lord!’ he continued, ‘only to think that, this time last year, I was a-smackin’ my chops over mutton uns; an’ full and plenty of everythin’ in the Hostralian Bush. What a hass I was to leave it! One’d think there was some sort o’ damned magic in the sea to be able to draw a feller a thousand miles down from good times, good tucker, good pay, an’ all night in, with a spree whenever you felt fit.’