Why, this Greenwich pensioner is in himself a record of the last forty years’ war. He is a breathing volume of naval history: not an event but is somewhere indented in him with steel or lead: he has been the stick in which the English Mars has notched his cricket matches, when twenty-four pounders were balls, and mainmasts wickets. See, in his blinded eye is Howe’s victory on the glorious First of June; that stump of what was once an arm is Nile; and in his wooden leg read Trafalgar. As to his scars, a gallant action, or a desperate cutting out is noted in every one of them. And what was the old fellow’s only wish, as with a shattered knee he lay in the cock-pit under the surgeon’s hand—what was his earnest supplication to the wet-eyed messmate who bore him down the hatchway? Simply that he would save him one of the splinters of the mainmast of the _Victory_, to make of it a leg for Sundays! His wish was granted; and at Greenwich, always on the seventh day, and also on the 21st of October, is he to be seen, propped upon the inestimable splinter, which from labour, time, and beeswax, has taken the dark glossiness of mahogany. What a face he has! What a certain consciousness of his superiority on his own element at times puffs out his lip, and gives a sudden twitch to his head! But ask him in what quarter sets the wind—and note, how with his one eye he will glance at you from top to toe; and, without ever raising his head or hand to make a self-inquiry, answers you at once, as though it was a question he was already prepared for! And so, indeed, he is; it being his first business, on rising, to consult the weather. The only way to gain his entire confidence, is at once frankly to avow your utter ignorance, and his superiority; and then, after he has leered at you with an eye in which there is a meeting of contempt, good-humour, and self-importance, he is wholly your own; and will straightway launch into the South Seas, coast along the shores of Guinea,—where, by-the-bye, he will tell you he once fell in love with a negress, who, however, jilted him for the cook—and then he will launch out about Admiral Duncan—take you a voyage with him round Cape Horn, where a mermaid appeared, and sang a song to the ship’s crew; and who, indeed, blew aside all the musket shots that were ungallantly fired at her in requital of her melody. But our pensioner has one particular story; hear him through that, suffer yourself to be wholly astounded at its recital, and, if you were not a landsman, he would instantly greet you as his dearest friend. The heroes of this same story are, our pensioner and a shark: a tremendous shark that used to be the terror of the harbour of St Thomas’s. Upon this shark, and the piece of the mainmast of the _Victory_, is our pensioner content to rest all his importance during his life, and his fame with posterity. He will tell you that he, being caterer of the mess, let fall a piece of beef out at