He laughed and drew his hat down over his brows.

'It is the first time that I have seen Sir Ralph Lingard's face,' said he, 'but I saw his back at Preston fight.
Ah, lad, proud as he looks, if he did but see old Noll coming in through the door he would not think it beneath him to climb out through the window!' The clank of steel or the sight of a buff-coat would always serve to stir up the old Roundhead bitterness in my father's breast.
But there were other sights in Portsmouth besides the red-coats and their Governor.

The yard was the second in the kingdom, after Chatham, and there was ever some new war-ship ready upon the slips.

Then there was a squadron of King's ships, and sometimes the whole fleet at Spithead, when the streets would be full of sailors, with their faces as brown as mahogany and pigtails as stiff and hard as their cutlasses.

To watch their rolling gait, and to hear their strange, quaint talk, and their tales of the Dutch wars, was a rare treat to me; and I have sometimes when I was alone fastened myself on to a group of them, and passed the day in wandering from tavern to tavern.