Synopsis

Brother Jack, a seaman’s bag over his shoulders, trudged sturdily ahead; father followed, carrying the oars, spars, sails, and other gear of the wherry, while as I toddled alongside him I held on with one hand to the skirt of his pea-jacket, and griped the boat-hook which had been given to my charge with the other. From the front of the well-known inn, the “Keppel’s Head,” the portrait of the brave old iral, which I always looked at with awe and iration, thinking what a great man he must have been, gazed sternly down on us as we made our way along the Common Hard of Portsea towards the water’s edge.