"I'm sure I've given you quite as good a definition as you would find in any of those 'catechisms of common things'--catechisms of conundrums, I call them--which boys and girls are made to learn by rote, like parrots, without really acquiring any sensible knowledge of the subjects they are supposed to teach! I might tell you, as these works do, that 'steam was an elastic fluid generated by water when in a boiling state'; but, would you be any the wiser for that piece of information, eh?"

"No, Captain," answered Bob, still giggling, "I don't understand."

"Or, I might tell you 'steam: is only a synonym for heat, the cause of all motion'--do you understand that?"

Bob still shook his head, trying vainly to keep from laughing.

"Of course not," cried the Captain triumphantly, "nor would I, either, unless I knew something more about it; and to tell you that would take me all the day nearly."

"Oh spare us," said Mrs Gilmour plaintively. "Pray spare us that!"

"I will, ma'am," he replied. "I a.s.sure you I wasn't going to do it.

Some time or other, though, this young shaver shall come along with me when one of the new ships goes out from the dockyard for her steam trials; and then, perhaps, he will be able to have everything explained to him properly, without boring you or bothering me."

"How jolly!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bob. "I should like that."

"You mustn't count your chickens before they're hatched," growled the other, turning round on him abruptly; "and, if ever I catch you sn.i.g.g.e.ring again when I'm talking I'll--I'll--"

What the Captain's terrible threat was must ever remain a mystery; for, just at that moment, Nell, who had been looking over the side of the steamer, watching the creamy foam churned-up by her paddles and rolling with heavy undulations into the long white wake astern marking her progress through the water, suddenly uttered an exclamation.

"Look, look, aunt Polly!" she cried excitedly. "Oh, look!"

"What, dearie?" inquired Mrs Gilmour, bending towards her, thinking she had dropped her glove or something into the sea. "What is it?"

"There, there!" said Nellie, pointing out some dark objects that could be seen tumbling about in the tideway some distance off the starboard quarter. "See those big fishes, auntie! Are they whales?"

It was the Captain's turn to laugh now.

"Whales, eh? By Jove, you'll be the death of me, missy, by Jove, you will, ho-ho-ho!" he chuckled, leaning on his stick for support. "What does Shakespeare say, eh? 'very like a whale,' eh? Ho-ho-ho!"

Miss Nell did not like this at all, though she did not object to laughing at others.

"Well, what are they?" she asked indignantly. "What are they?"

"Pigs;" replied the Captain with a grave face, but there was a sly twinkle of his left eye approaching to a wink. "Those are pigs, missy."

"I don't believe it," cried the young lady in a pet, putting up her shoulders in high disdain. "You're only making fun of me!"

"Hush, dearie, you mustn't be rude," said Mrs Gilmour reprovingly; "but sure, Captain, you shouldn't make game of the child."

"I a.s.sure you, I'm not doing so, ma'am," he protested, chuckling though still with much enjoyment. "I've only told her the simple truth. They _are_ pigs, sea-pigs if you like, commonly called porpoises. But, whales, by Jove, that's a good joke, ho-ho-ho!"

This time Nellie laughed too, the old sailor seemed to enjoy her mistake with such gusto; and, harmony being thus restored, they all turned to watch the graceful motions of the animals that had caused the discussion, which, swimming abreast of the vessel, were ever and anon darting across her bows and playing round her, describing the most beautiful curves as they dived under each other, apparently indulging in a game of leap-frog.

The _Bembridge Belle_ was now just about midway between Southsea and Seaview, and close upon the buoy marking the spot where the old _Marie Rose_, the first big ship of our embryo navy, sank in the reign of bluff King Hal, in an action she had with a French squadron that attempted entering the Solent with the idea of capturing the Isle of Wight. The 'mounseers,' as the Captain explained to Bob, were beaten off in the battle and most of their vessels captured, a result owing largely to the part played by the gallant _Marie Rose_; though, sad be it to relate, while resisting all the efforts made by the enemy to carry her by the board, being somewhat top-heavy, "she 'turned the turtle' at the very moment when her guns were brought to bear a-starboard, to give a final broadside to the French admiral and settle the action, the poor thing then incontinently sinking to the bottom, where her bones yet lie."

"Not far-off either," continued the Captain, "the _Royal George_ also foundered in the last century, with over nine hundred hands, there being a lot of sh.o.r.e folk in the ship beside her crew. Her Admiral, Kempenfeldt, was also on board, and--"

"Yes," said Mrs Gilmour, interrupting him; "and, sure, there's a pretty little poem my favourite Cowper wrote about it which I recollect I learnt by heart when I was a little girl, much smaller than you, Nell.

The lines began thus-- 'Toll for the brave, the brave that are no more,'--don't you remember them; I'm sure you must, Captain?"

"Can't say I do, ma'am," he replied--"poetry isn't in my line. But, as I was saying, the _Royal George_ heeled over pretty nearly in the same way as the other one did that I just now told you about; and, I remember when I was studying at the Naval College in the Dockyard ever so many years ago, when I was a youngster not much older than you, Master Bob, being out at Spithead when the wreck of the vessel was blown up, to clear the fairway for navigation. I've got a ruler and a paper-knife now at home that were carved out of pieces of her timber which I picked up at the time."

"How nice!" observed Mrs Gilmour. "A charming recollection, I call it!"

"Well, I don't know about that," replied the Captain, who seemed a little bit grumpy, and was fumbling in his pockets without apparently being able to find the object of which he was in search--"my recollection is not so good as I would like it!"

On Mrs Gilmour looking at him inquiringly, noticing the tone in which he spoke, the truth came out.

"The fact is, ma'am, I've lost my snuff-box," he said apologetically to excuse his snappy answers. "I must have left it in my other coat at home."

He did not give up the quest, however, but continued to dive his hands on the right and left alternately into pocket after pocket; until, suddenly, the cross expression vanished from his face, being succeeded by a beaming smile, followed by his customary good-humoured chuckle.

"I've found it!" he exclaimed triumphantly, producing the missing box from the usual pocket in which he kept it, where it had lain all the time; and, taking a pinch, the Captain was himself again. "By Jove, I thought my memory was gone!"

The porpoises all this while continued their gambols about the steamer, now ahead, now astern, now swimming abreast, one after the other, rolling, diving, and jumping out of the water sometimes in their sport.

They seemed to be having a regular holiday of it; and, tired of leap- frog, had taken to "follow my leader" or some other game. At any rate, they did not think much of the _Bembridge Belle_, pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing and going round her at intervals, as if to show their contempt of a speed they could so readily eclipse.

"Do you often see them here playing like this?" asked Nellie of the Captain, who was also looking over the side. "Is that the way they always swim?"

"No, missy," said he, with all his old geniality, "not often, though they pay us a visit now and then in summer when so inclined. Their coming now through Spithead is a sign that there's going to be a change of wind."

"Oh!" cried Nell wonderingly. "How strange!"

"Yes, my dear," went on the old sailor, smiling as he looked down in her puzzled face upturned to his, "I'm not joking, missy, as you think.

Those fellows are regular barometers in their way; and, if you note the direction towards which they are seen swimming when they pa.s.s a ship at sea, from that very point wind, frequently a gale, may be shortly expected."

"I hope we're not going to have another storm," said Nellie, thinking of their late experience. "I don't like those gales."

"No, no, not so bad as that now, I think," he replied, chuckling away.

"There probably will be only a slight shift of wind from the western quarter, whence it is now blowing, to the eastward, whither the porpoises are now making off for, as you can see for yourself."

So it subsequently turned out.

The "sea-pigs," as the Captain had at first jocularly termed them, bade good-bye to the steamer and its pa.s.sengers when they had got a little way beyond No Man's fort, and were approaching shoal water, with an impudent flick of their flukey tails in the air as they went off, shaping a straight course out towards the Nab light-ship, as if bound up Channel.

They had all been so occupied watching the porpoises that they had not noticed the rapid progress the steamer had been making towards her first port of call on the other side of the Solent; and so, almost at the same moment that the Captain called Nellie's attention to the last movements of the queer fish as they vanished in the distance, she shut off her steam and sidled up to Seaview pier.

"Who's for the sh.o.r.e?" cried out the skipper from his post on the paddle-box, as soon as the vessel had made fast, and the "brow," or gangway, was shoved ash.o.r.e for the pa.s.sengers to land, without any unnecessary delay. "Any ladies or gents for Seaview?"

The majority of those on board at once quitted the steamer, amongst them being our quintet.

As they were stepping on to the pier, however, a slight difficulty arose in connection with one of their number.

It was about Rover.

"Is that your dog?" asked the collector of tickets of the