I was the jest of the ship. The mids in the gun-room hit off the keynote of my personal appearance when they christened me Tubby the very first day I went on shipboard; and Tubby I remained till I was given a command on the captured sloop _St. Malo_, in the year 18--. It was recognised at once that I could stand a good deal more than my share of gun-room wit without quarrelling, though I showed no deficiency in pluck when it came to going aloft in heavy weather, or steering a boat under heavy fire; and I was popular, I believe, though no one thought me worth considering. I was not born to be considered: I was born to attach myself to a strong nature, to subordinate myself to its will and enjoy its glory as if it were my own. My friendship with Will has filled my life. For all the years during which we were shipmates, my thoughts were hardly ever off Will Hardres; and now that we are both of us laid on the shelf on this windy coast of Kent, because Europe is so exhausted that there will never be any wars again, my little crib is within an old pony's amble of his mansion-house of Eastry, and my wife, his sister, leads me the same dance as Will led me--God bless her! I am not like to forget the first day we met. The wind was roaring; the sky was a feather-bed of clouds; the ships were forging up and down at their anchors; their cables and timbers were cracking rather than creaking, even under the lee of the land; and the waves looked like sweeping away the narrow spit of shore which shuts out the sea and makes Brading Harbour. We had a noble fleet. A few men-of-war on their way out to join my Lord St. Vincent, Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, and with them the Portugal, Gibraltar, and Mediterranean convoy, lay in the roads between St. Helen's, in the Isle of Wight, and Spithead, on the morning of that 8th of April, 1798, waiting for the gale to drop or shift from the south-west, till when they were wind-bound,--for the Mediterranean. Our ship, the _Vanguard_, a fine seventy-four, was one of the nearest in-shore, for we had the Admiral aboard. Walking up and down the slippery deck with Berry, our Captain, was a most remarkable-looking little man. His shoulders were made to appear narrower than they really were by the loss of his right arm and the way he pulled his coat round it. A certain peculiarity in his gait was probably due to the same cause. The flowing hair which almost concealed his ears, the ruddy skin and bright blue eyes would alone have attracted attention. It was a small face, with certain very marked features. The forehead was lofty, though narrow; the nose was long, and almost straight; the chin, though very strong, was not broad; and his mouth, which was noticeably large, was the most extraordinarily sensitive mouth I have ever seen. In remarking its size, it was not the length that you noted, but the range and flexibility of the lips. This contributed largely to the wonderful expressiveness of the face.