"Butter your shirt, sing tantara-bobus make shift!" answered jolly old Matthew; "what matters it how old one may be? We shall live till we die—kill us that dare!" And the pair of sound-hearted old tars burst into a merry laugh that came up so clearly from the well-spring of their hearts as to create a kindred merriment through the curious crowd, which had by this time begun to gather round them, in the narrow street. "Well, but come, shipmate, this must not be a dry meeting," said Paul; "suppose we step into the Red Lion, or the Black Horse, that I see on the signs here, hard by, and wet our whistles together, once more. It may be for the last time, you know, in this world." "Avast, heaving!" replied Matthew; "I have no objection for Molly Crabtree, here, to fetch us a jack of rum or so, and we can have it in my little berth; but my old head won't bear the racket of a public-house now, Paul." "Well, well, have it your own way, Mat," replied the other; and the two ancient men adjourned, as fast as their stiffened limbs would permit them, to Matthew's little dwelling in the alley. Matthew's hammock—for he could never be persuaded to sleep in a bed—was slung at one corner of the narrow room, and just under it was placed his arm-chair. He would fain have given up his usual seat, on this occasion, to his friend; but Paul Perkins had too much real and untaught courtesy to accept of it. "No, no, keep on board your own ship, Matthew," he cried; "I won't do any such thing: sit ye down, sit ye down." And so Matthew sat down, with this entreaty, and reared his two sticks against the wall, and doffed his rare hat, and showed his wig in all its glory. Paul looked round the room, and could not help indulging in the natural exultation of a sailor. Nelson, and Howe, and Duncan, and Rodney, showed their gallant faces, according to the best skill of some humble limner, over the little mantelpiece: a fine model of a first-rate man-of-war—the work of Matthew's own fingers in his younger days—stood, in unapproachable pride, upon a little dresser on the opposite side of the dwelling; and, above it, a curious tobacco-pipe, from some foreign shore, curled its enormous length around three or four nails driven into the wall, and displayed the painted image of a black-a-moor's head, at its extremity. Other odd fragments of a sailor's fondness, such as small carved "figure-heads" of vessels, wrought with the pocket-knife, to relieve hours of tedium, pouches of kangaroo-skin, the favourite repositories of the sailor's favourite weed, pipe-stoppers of bone, cut into grotesque shapes, and such-like nick-knackeries decorated the walls, till scarcely a bare patch of them could be seen. "Well, and I suppose you're at home here, Mat, eh?" said Paul, his face beaming with pleasure as he asked the question.