CHAPTER SEVEN.
I STARTLE MY FATHER.
My father was first up next morning, and had been out for an hour before I went down the garden to join him, and found him walking the quarter-deck.
You must not think by these words that he was on board a ship.

Nothing of the kind.

He called by that name a flat place at the bottom of the garden just at the edge of the cliff, where there was a low stone wall built to keep anyone from falling over a couple of hundred feet perpendicular to the rocks and beach below.
This was my father's favourite place, where he used to spend hours with his spy-glass, and along the edge of the wall, all carefully mounted, were six small brass cannon, which came out of a sloop that was wrecked below in the bay, and which my father bought for the price of old metal when the ship was broken up and sold.
I used to think sometimes that he ought to have called the place the battery, but he settled on the quarter-deck, and the quarter-deck it remained.
Always once a year on his birthday he would load and fire all the cannons, and it was quite a sight; for he used to call himself the crew and load them and prime them, and then send me in for the poker, which had all the time been getting red-hot in the kitchen.
Then he used to take the poker from me, and I used to stop my ears.

But as soon as I stopped my ears, he used to frown and say, "Take out the tompions, you young swab!" So I used to take out the tompions--I mean my fingers--and screw up my face and look on while with quite a grand air my father, who was a fine handsome man, with a fresh colour and curly grey hair, used to stand up very erect, give the poker a flourish through the air, and bring the end down upon a touch-hole.
Then _bang_! There would be a tremendous roar, and the rocks would echo as the white smoke floated upwards.
A quarter of a minute more and _bang_ would go another gun, and so on for the whole six, every one of them kicking hard and leaping back some distance on to the shingle.
When all were fired, my father used to push them on their little carriages all back into their places; then he used to "bend," as he called it, the white ensign on to the halyards, and run it up to the head of a rigged mast which stood at the corner, and close to the edge of the cliff, and after this shake hands with himself, left hand with right, and wish himself many happy returns of the day.
It was not his birthday that one on which I ran down the garden to join him; but there he was by his guns, busy with his spy-glass sweeping, as he called it, the Bristol Channel and talking to himself about the different craft.
"Hallo, Sep, my boy!" he said; "here's a morning for a holiday landsman--or boy.

Well, I didn't see much of you yesterday." "No, father," I said; "I was out all day with Doctor Chowne's boy and young Uggleston." "Rather a queer companion for you, my boy, eh?
Uggleston is a sad smuggler, they say; but let's see, his boy goes to your school ?" "Yes, father, and he's such a good fellow.