Drink invariably
made him morose, suspicious. His real goodwill to me had not
changed, as I was to learn. He had paid a visit to Captain
Branscome, and give him special instructions to teach me the art of
navigation, the intricacies of which eluded his own fuddled brain.
But for the present he could only talk of trivialities, and
especially of the barber's parrot, for which he had conceived a
ferocious hate.
"I'll wring his neck, I will!" he kept repeating. "I'll wring his
neck one o' these days, blast me if I don't!"
I took my leave that evening in no wise eager to repeat the visit;
and, in fact, I repeated it but twice--and each time to find him in
the same sullen humour--between then and May 11, the day when the
_Wellingboro'_ transport cast anchor in Falmouth roads with two
hundred and fifty returned prisoners of war.
She had sailed from Bordeaux on April 20, in company with five other
transports bound for Plymouth, and her putting into Falmouth to
repair her steering-gear came as a surprise to the town, which at
once hung out all its bunting and prepared to welcome her poor
passengers home to England with open arm. A sorry crew they looked,
ragged, wild eyed, and emaciated, as the boats brought them ashore at
the Market Stairs to the strains of the Falmouth Artillery Band.
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