THE meeting of an old friend is always a pleasant incident in our lives, and I make bold to assume that you who are now reading these words have previously read my " Memories of the Sea," and that you are therefore not loth to renew our previous acquaintance, nor to listen patiently to some more stories of life in the Navy in the last century. I trust, therefore, that 1 succeeded in entertaining, or perhaps amusing, you on a former occasion, and that I may claim you as an old friend who will indulgently accompany me upon a few more cruises, in Her Majesty's ships, to various quarters of the globe, to show the flag, police the seas, and maintain that very real but rather indescribable thing we call British prestige.

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