Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tfob. CHAPTER I. HOW I CAME TO KNOW HIM. I First met my good friend Bob at a temperance meeting in which he and I were to take part asspeakers. I had previously been attending another meeting, and had to come from a distant part of the city in a cab, winding in and out through the misty darkness until I found myself set down on a quay, where I could dimly make out chains and ropes and all the signs of shipping. A friendly hand piloted me across the gangway, and along the deck of a vessel, until I reached a narrow, winding staircase, down which I felt my way through the darkness. Then, as a door was flung open, a blaze of light fell on me suddenly, and I found myself in the midst of the meeting. It was a large place, in which nearly a thousand persons must have been gathered. The sides of the long, low room were decorated with the flags of all nations; and this, as well as the faces and dress of most of the audience, and the whole tone and freedom of the meeting, suggested the heartiness of the sailor. The songs were lustily applauded, and the chorus was rung out with that rollicking vigour which no one understands so well as Jack ashore. The very speeches seemed irresistibly to catch a kind of nautical flavour, and the illustrations came from the sea. This was the Bethel ship at B, of old a sloop of war known as the Etna. She had done her share of fighting in the Chinese seas, and then had come home to lie in easy indolence with many another fighting companion in Plymouth Sound. But suddenly the career of the Etna was completely changed. She was purchased of the Government for 1500Z., and converted into a preaching-place for sailors. A wonderful power attended the earliest services that were held on board. At almost every meeting souls were stricken down in a b…