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Updated: June 15, 2025
I was carried away by sleep to far cities and among other men, to great perils of the sea, to strange sights; but over them all loomed the phantom of a golden ship, and from her decks great fires came. When I awoke, a doctor from Southsea was writing down the names of drugs upon paper; and Mary was busy with ice. They told me I had slept for thirty hours, and that they had feared brain-fever.
'I should think they did, he replied; 'I will let you have that last verse if you like. I thanked him sarcastically, and at last he withdrew. I have, however, come across some real talent in this way. For instance, that admirable actor and entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a protégé of mine, and you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident occurred at Southsea.
And yet such, literally such and no better, is the refinement of modern England; such, and no better, is the civilization of our great towns. Such I fear from what I am told, is the civilization of Southsea, beside the barbarism to be found in Portsea close at hand.
Without waiting to hear more of what Jerry might say, I hurried aft, and found the first lieutenant issuing his orders. "What is it you want, my man?" he asked as I approached him, hat in hand. "Please, sir, I've got a young wife ashore at Southsea, and I was torn away from her by a pressgang. May I have leave to go and see her, and I promise to be back at any time you may name."
As she drifted from Spithead towards Southsea, her guns continued to go off, until touching the shore, she blew up with a tremendous explosion. The ships at Spithead now are of a very different appearance from those formerly seen there. Among them was the Minotaur, which, in consequence of her great length, is fitted with five masts.
A month at Southsea, with Rupert Gunning's sister, Maudie Spicer, where she again encountered Captain Carteret, and entered aimlessly upon a semi-platonic and wholly unprofitable flirtation with him.
You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea, when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about. I thought perhaps Dick Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance."
Our commander exchanged signals with the people on the tug, however, telling them that their services were not required, though thanking them for the help they would have rendered us; and the wind, which had been shifting about to all parts of the compass while we had been ashore on the sand ledge, now veering to the south'ard and west'ard, we bore away before it with squared yards up the Solent towards Spithead, where we anchored for the night, almost in the fairway, abreast of Southsea Castle.
The parcel was duly dispatched down to Southsea; but, though Nellie subsequently wrote a nice little letter to the Captain in her own nice handwriting, large and legible, such as the old sailor could read comfortably without spectacles, wherein she mentioned all the latest news of her aquarium tenants, telling how the hermit crab had distrained for his rent on a young lobster who had cast-off his shell, and that a small skate objected to the ice, she could learn nothing of how "the good Sarah" received her present.
For a year after Gerald's death she lived with his family at Silchester, in preference to going to her own. After that she settled in the small house at Southsea, where from time to time she had her girlhood's companion, Olivia Guion, as a guest. "Perhaps that'll do us good," Miss Guion ventured, in reply to Drusilla's observations at her expense.
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