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CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
OF CERTAIN TICKLISH UPS AND DOWNS IN MY LIFE: AMONGST OTHERS OF MY BEING PRESSED FOR SERVICE IN THE FLEET

The best of Friends, says the Proverb, must part, and so must the worst, or the most indifferent of companions. By this time, I apprehend, – that is to say, the year 1728, Messieurs Pinchin, Hodge, and Dangerous had had quite enough of each other's company, and 'twas ripe Time for 'em to Part. Not but what there were some difficulties in the way. 'Twas not to be denied that my little Master was a parcel curmudgeon, very vain and conceited, very difficult of management in his Everlasting Tempers, and a trifle Mad, besides; but his service – apart from the inconvenience of bearing with a tetchy, half Lunatic Ape of Quality, was light and easy; the victuals were abundant and the Wages were comfortable. There must be two parties to make a quarrel, and when Master and servant propose to part, there should be a perfect agreement between them as to the manner of their going asunder. A Hundred times, vexed by the follies and exactions of the little man, I had sworn that I would doff his livery, and have nothing more to do with him; but then came the Reflection of the certain Bite and Sup, and I withheld my abandonment of Service. It may be that the Chaplain, Mr. Hodge, was very much of the same mind as your Humble. He said often, that he had been bearleader quite long enough to this young Cub, and was sick alike of his savage hugs, and uncouth gestures, when he had a mind to dance. Yet was he wise enough in his generation to acknowledge the commodity of a fat Pasty and a full Flask every day in the year, and of a neverfailing crown piece in the pouch in the morning for a draught to cool one's throat, when the bottle had been pushed about pretty briskly overnight. Parson Hodge was a philosopher. "I don't like the kicks," quoth he; "but when halfpence come along with 'em, they cease to be intolerable."

However, all our nice weighings of Pros and Cons were brought to a very abrupt standstill upon our arrival at Dover (having taken a post chariot from Ramsgate) by the Inconceivable Behaviour of Mr. Pinchin. This young Gentleman, utterly forgetting the claims of Duty, of Honour, of Honesty, and of Gratitude, fairly Ran away from us, his faithful and Attached Domestics. Without with your leave or by your leave he showed us a clean pair of Heels. He left a very cool Letter for the Chaplain in the hands of the master of the Inn where we put up, in which he repeated his old uncivil Accusation, that we had eaten him out of House and Home, that we were Leeches, Pirates, bloodsucking vampires, and the like – myself he even did the honour to call a Designing Cockatrice – and that he had fled from us to save the small remains of his Fortune from being Devoured, and intended to rejoin his long-neglected Mamma. Mr. Hodge read me this letter with a very long face, and asked me what I intended to do. I answered that I should be better able to tell him when he had read me the Postscript to the letter, for that I hardly fancied that Squire Pinchin would behave in so Base and Mean a manner as to run away without paying his Body Servant's wages. Upon this the Reverend Gentleman hems and ha's somewhat, and gave me to understand that Mr. Pinchin had enclosed a draft upon a Goldsmith in Change Alley in part disbursement of his debt to him, Mr. Hodge, and that out of that – although no special provision had been made for me by Mr. Pinchin – he thought he could spare me a matter of Ten Pound. Now as he kept the letter very tight in his hand, and was, withal, a Strong Man, who would have resisted any attempt of mine to wrest it from him, I was fain to take his statement for granted, and in a very Sulky manner agreed to accept the Ten Pound in full of all demands, stipulating only that my Travelling charges to London should be defrayed. This Mr. Hodge boggled at for awhile; but, seeing me Resolute he gave way, and at last said that there was no need for me to trouble with going to the Goldsmith in London to get the Draft changed – "If, indeed," says he, "the unhappy young spendthrift be not proclaimed a Bankrupt before I get this slip of paper cashed;" and that having a small store of Gold by him, he would give me the Ten Pound down, together with a couple of Pieces to bear my Expenses to the Town. To this I agreed; and his Reverence handing me over the ready, we cried Quits.

"And now, Sir," says I, "as you are no longer a Led-Parson, and I am no longer a Lacquey, we are both, till we get Fresh Places, Gentlemen at large, and Jack is as good as his Master, I shall be happy to crack a bottle of Lisbon with you, and whether you pay or I pay shall be decided by the flinging up of a Jacobus."

He declared that I was an Impudent young Fellow, with more Wickednesses in my Heart than I had hairs in my Head; but he accepted my Invitation to crack the bottle of Lisbon very readily, and won the Toss of me with much Affability. So, after a joyous Rouse (which my young Head could then stand, but I am a sad Skinker at the bottle now), the Landlord standing in, we drank Mr. Pinchin's health and better manners to him; and his Reverence dismissed me with a Buss and his Benediction.

"When you reach London, which is a wicked place," says he; "I prithee get you to Highgate, and without more ado cause yourself to be sworn upon the Horns there, never to drink Small Ale when you can get Strong, and never to Kiss the Maid when you can Kiss the Mistress. After that, with your Face, and your Figure, and your Foreign Travel, to say nothing of your Amazing Impudence, and your Incorrigible habit of Lying, I think you will do pretty well. Go thy ways, my son, and if ever you come to be hanged, send for Parson Hodge, and he will (with the Ordinary's permission) do everything for you in the cart that a True Blue Church and State Man can wish. Vale: that is to say, get off, you vagabond," with which in his merry way he half pushes me out of the room at the Inn, and I dare say that he had given a sufficiently liberal construction to Mr. Pinchin's postscript as to cheat me out of Twenty Pound.

And now on this worthy I must bestow a brace of Paragraphs ere I dismiss him for good and all, premising that the knowledge of what I am about to set down did not come upon me at this period of my History, but was gathered up, in Odds and Ends in subsequent epochs of my career: – some of it, indeed, many years afterwards. Parson Hodge had managed – all losses allowed for – to feather his nest pretty well out of his attendance on Squire Bartholomew Pinchin, and the ten or twelve pound he doled out to me (whether the story about the draft on the Goldsmith was a Cock and Bull one or not) must have been but a mere fleabite to him. I heard that he went down to the Bath, and dropping his Clerical Dignity for awhile, set up for a fashionable Physician of High Dutch extraction that was to cure all ailments. Doctor Von Hoogius I think he called himself; and his travelling about with my little Master had given him just such a smattering of Tongues as to enable him to speak Broken English with just so much of a foreign accent as to make it unlike a Brogue or a Burr. The guineas came in pretty quickly, and I believe that he cured several people of the Quinsy with pills made of dough, hogslard, cinnamon, and turmeric, and that he was highly successful in ridding ladies of fashion of the vapours by means of his Royal Arabian Electuary, which was nothing more than white Jamaica Rum coloured pink and with a flavouring of Almonds. The regular Practitioners, however, grew jealous of him, and beginning to ask him impertinent questions about his Diploma, he was fain to give up Legitimate practice, and to pick up a dirty Living as a mere Quack, and Vendor of Pills, Potions, Salves, Balsams, and Elixirs of Life. Then he came down in the world, owing to a Waiting Gentlewoman whose fortune he must needs tell, and whom, 'tis said, he cozened out of three quarters' wages; so, for fear of being committed by the justices as a Rogue and Vagabond, he then kept a Herb Shop for some time, with great success, until he got into trouble about a Horse, and being clearly Tart of that crime, very wisely shifted his quarters to the Kingdom of Ireland. I have heard that by turns he was, in his New Sphere, a Player at the Dublin Theatre, a Drawer at a Usquebaugh Shop in Cork, a hedge-schoolmaster among the Bogtrotters – a wild, savage kind of People, that infest the Southern parts of that fertile but distracted kingdom – a teacher of the Mathematics in Belfast, and a fiddler going about to wakes and weddings in the county of Galway. 'Twas whilst pursuing this last and jovial vocation that he was fortunate enough to run away with an Heiress of considerable Fortune. He managed it by a sort of Rough and Ready process they call over there an Abduction, two or three of the Wild Irishes being killed while he was getting the young lady on the car to take her away to be married; and she, happening to be a Ward in Chancery, he fell into Contempt, and was committed to Newgate in the City of Dublin, where he might have lain till his heels rotted off, but for the Favourable Renown into which he grew by his Bold and Gallant Feat of Abduction, and which brought him into such sympathetic notice, that interest was made with the Chancellor to purge him of his contempt, and he was honourably Discharged therefrom by means of escaping from Newgate at night by means of a Silver Key agreed upon betwixt him and the Warden. By the way, he had the sagacity at this time to conceal his being an Englishman, and passed very easily by the name of O'Hagan. A subscription was made for him among the Quality after his Enlargement, and he was charitably advised to push his fortune among the Saxons in England, his good friends little suspecting that he had already pushed his Fortune there, at different times, to a very pretty tune. But for his unfortunate – or rather fortunate, for him – collision with justice, he might have obtained employment as a Tithe Proctor with some of the dignified and non-resident Established Clergy in Ireland, who were very anxious to have able and Unscrupulous Men to collect their Dues for 'em; but the Sister Isle being, on several accounts, too hot for Mr. Hodge, Von Hoogius, O'Hagan, he took shipping with a purse full of guineas, collected for him by his kind friends, for Liverpool in Lancashire. Here he prospered indifferently for a time, now as a Schoolmaster, now as a Quack Doctor, under his old High Dutch alias, and now as an Agent for the crimping of children for the West India plantations, which last traffic I have ever held, for reasons personal, to be utterly Indefensible and Abominable. A Bill of Indictment before the Grand Jury speedily, however, put an end to the chaplain's dealings in flesh and blood; so he made what haste he could to town, where squandering what means he had with him in Riot and Unthrift, and being unluckily recognised by an old acquaintance in the Tailoring line, he was arrested on civil process, and clapped into the Fleet Prison. But here his ever-soaring genius took a new Flight. Those half surreptitious and wholly scandalous Nuptials known as Fleet Marriages, were then very rife, and the adventurer had wit enough to discover that it was to his interest to resume his cassock and bands, and to become the Reverend Mr. Hodge once more. Not much was wanted to set him up in business. Canonicals were to be had cheap enough in Rag Fair for the sending for 'em; a greasy Common Prayer Book and a chandler's-shop ledger to serve as a Register, did not cost much; so with these, and an inimitably Brazen face, behold our worthy equipped as a perfect Fleet Parson. He had to maintain at first a ragged regiment of cads and Runners to tout for him and bring him customers, but he soon became notorious, and formed a very fine connexion. Judgements by the score had been obtained, and Detainers lodged against him at the gate, since his incarceration at the suit of his acquaintance, the Tailor; but 'twas not long ere he contrived, by the easy process of joining people's hands, to gain enough to pay all the claims against him, and by permission of the Warden of the Fleet, to set up a Chapel and Liquor Shop within the rules of the prison. Punch, Geneva, poisonous wine, brandy, bitters, Rum, and Tobacco, were sold below stairs, and the Order for the Solemnization of Matrimony was performed on the first floor. It became quite a fashionable thing to go and be married by Parson Hodge, and at last it would be said of him, that if he extorted money from you beforehand, he did not pick your pocket afterwards, as too many of the Fleet Parsons in those shameful days were in the habit of doing. He continued at this merry game for many years, being in his way quite as popular as Orator Henley, and coining a great deal more money than that crack-brained Fanatic – for I have always been at pains to discover whether Henley was more Rogue or Fool – till at last his lucrative but unholy trade was put an end to by an Act of Parliament, called for by the righteous indignation of all peaceable and loyal subjects of the King, who did not desire to be married in haste and to repent at leisure. I believe that Parson Hodge retired with a comfortable fortune, and, going down into Somersetshire, purchased a small estate there, and died, much respected, in the odour of many pigs, and in the Commission of the Peace.

As for poor little Bartholomew Pinchin, his career was not nearly so prosperous, nor his end so happy. You will learn, a little further on, what scurvy tricks Fortune played him, and how at last his poor little brains succumbed to the rough toasting of that graceless jade. I had always thought him Mad, and Mad, indeed, as a March hare he proved to be in the long run.

And now as to Myself, for it is surely fitting that a proper young Fellow, such as I was now, stout and vigorous, and going for nineteen years of age, should no longer remain in the Background. First I hied me to London by the waggon, where, after four days' journey – for it was ill travelling in those days, between London and Dover – I arrived without any misadventure. I was my own Master, I had Ten Pound in my pocket (the two additional Pieces being now spent), and I did not know one single soul in a city of eight hundred thousand inhabitants. Is it to be wondered at, under these premises, that before I fixed upon any decided line of life, I went, first of all, to the Deuce. It took me but a woundily short time to reach that Goal. For ten pounds you may reckon, we will say – if you put up at a small alehouse in the Borough – upon about ten friends who shall be very fond of you for a couple of days. I think, at the beginning of the third, I had just three and sixpence left wherewith to buy a razor to cut my throat withal. "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the last of the fleeting friends who had abided with me. "Three and sixpence for a razor, forsooth! why, a yard of good new cord, quite strong enough to bear your weight, can be bought in any shop in Tooley-street for a penny. You have just three and fivepence left, brother, to make yourself merry for the day, and, please the pigs, we will be merry as grigs upon it until Sundown (for I took a fancy to you the first minute I set eyes upon you), and even then there are two ways out of the hobble, without twisting your weasand. I have a pair of pistols, and as I love you like a brother, will share anything with you; and we will pad the hoof betwixt this and Deptford, and see whether we can meet any fat Kentish hop-grower on his way to the Borough Market with more money than wit – a capital plan, any way, seeing that if you fail, the Sheriff will hang you for nothing, and you can keep your penny for drink, or else you can list for a soldier, as many a tall and pretty fellow in the like straits has done before."

I civilly declined this amicable and philosophical advice, for it had suddenly become apparent to me that my new friend was a confirmed Rogue. For opening of the Eyes there is nothing like having spent all your money. I gave him a shilling, however, out of my three and sixpence, and crossed London Bridge to see if I could find better luck on the Middlesex side, determined, if nothing offered itself during the day, to ask my way to the Barracks at the Savoy and list for a Soldier. I amused myself as I walked, with the thought that chance might so bring it about for the Sergeant who would give me the King's shilling to be the selfsame grenadier whose sconce I had broken years agone in Charlwood Chase with the Demijohn of Brandy.

I had heard, as most Ignoramuses have done, I suppose, that London Streets are paved with Gold; and I found 'em as Muddy, as Stony, and as Hardhearted as I dare say they have been discovered by ten thousand Ignoramuses before my time to be. I was quite dazed and stupified with the noise and uproar of the Great City, the more perplexing to me as I was not only a Stranger, but almost a Foreigner and Outlandish Man in Great Britain. I could speak my own tongue well enough with Parson Hodge and Mr. Pinchin, but when it came to be clamoured all around me by innumerable voices, I a'most lost heart, and gave up the notion that I was an Englishman at all. It must be confessed, that half a century since we English were a very Blackguard People, and that London was about the most disreputable city in all Europe. There were few public buildings of any great note or of Majestic Proportions, save St. Paul's Cathedral, the Monument, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The Mansion House and the Bank of England were not yet built, and between them and the Royal Exchange (the which, noble enough in itself, was girt about, and choked up with Shops and Tenements exceeding mean and shabby), was a nasty, rubbishing, faint-smelling place, full of fruiterers and herbalists, called the Stocks Market. The crazy and rotten City Gates blocked up the chief thoroughfares, and across the bottom of Ludgate Hill yawned a marvellous foul and filthy open sewer, rich in dead dogs and cats, called the Fleet Ditch. This street was fair enough, and full of commodious houses and wealthy shops, but all about Temple Bar was a vile and horrid labyrinth of lanes and alleys, the chief and the most villanous of which was a place full of tripe shops and low taverns, called Butcher Row, leading from the Bar down to the Churchyard of St. Clement's Danes. The Strand was broad and fair enough to view as far as the New Exchange; but in lieu of that magnificent structure which Sir William Chambers, the Swedish architect, has built for Government offices, and where the Royal Academy of Arts and the Learned Societies have their apartments (when I first came to town there was no Royal Academy at all, only a Mean School for painting from the Life and drawing from Bustos in St. Martin's Lane; the Royal Society held their sittings in a court off Fleet Street; the College of Physicians was chock-a-block among the butchers in Warwick Lane, Newgate Market, where it still, to the scandal of Science, remains; and Surgeon's Hall, where malefactors were anatomised after execution – a Sanguinary but Salutary custom – was in the Old Bailey, over against the leads of the Sessions House) – in place, then, of what we now call Somerset House, albeit it has lost all connexion with the proud Duke of that name, there stood the Old Palace of the Queens of England, a remarkable tumbledown barn of a place, hideous in its ugliness towards the Strand, but having some stately edifices at the back, built by that Famous Engineer, Mr. Inigo Jones. Here sometimes Queens were lodged, and sometimes Embassadors – 'twas the Venetian Envoy, I think, that had his rooms in Somerset House when I first knew it, – and sometimes Masquerades were given. A company of Soldiers was kept on guard in the precincts, not so much for ornament as for use, for they had hard work every night in the week in quelling the pottle-pot brawls and brabbling among the Rogues, Thieves, Besognosos, Beggars, Ribbibes, Bidstands, and Clapper-dudgeons, male and female, who infested the outskirts of the Old Palace, or had Impudently Squatted within its very walls, and had made of the Place a very Alsatia, now that Scamp's Paradise in Whitefriars had been put down by Act of Parliament. Here they burrowed like so many Grice, till the shoulder-tapping Pilchers of the Compter came a badger-drawing with their bludgeons. 'Twas a perfect chaos of clap-dishes, skeldering, cranion-legged Impostors, fittous cripples, and gambling bullies, for ever roaring over Post and Pair, or Dust Point, or throwing their Highmen, or barbing gold, or yelling profane songs and catches. A man was killed here about every other day in some Callet and Cockoloch squabble, and there was a broil about twice in every hour. Of course there were Patricos here, who only wanted Fashionable Encouragement to rival the Feet Parsons in the trade of faggot-weddings. There were philosophers who devised schemes for paying off the National Debt, or for making roast ribs of beef out of brickbats. Here were swept the last pillings and frayings of the South Sea Bubble, in the shape of divers Speculators and Directors who had absconded from their Creditors, and were here pretty safe from arrest, for although not legally a sanctuary, it was as chancy to cop a man here on a capias as to put one's naked hand into a bag full of rats.

I dined this day at a sixpenny ordinary in the New Exchange, and after that asked my way to the Savoy, which I found to be close by. So I walked down to the old Tower, and passed the time of day to the Sergeant of the Guard, who was for having me empty a can of ale with him on the spot, but I would not then, and concealed my intention, being minded to defer the execution of it till sunset. I don't know what Vain and Foolish Hope possessed me that something might yet turn up which might save me from the sad necessity of listing for a soldier, to the which vocation, mindful of my early experiences among the Blacks in Charlwood Chase, I entertained a very sincere Abhorrence. So I wandered up and down the Streets, asking from time to time where I was, and being (as is usual with the People of England in their intercourse with strangers) cursed or laughed at for a fool or a bumpkin. Half a dozen times I felt that some rogue was trying my pocket; but I knew I had no money to be robbed of, and kept my kerchief in my hat; only the bare endeavour made me mad, and the next time one of my gentleman nick-skins made a dive into my pouch, I turned round and hit him a crack over the head with a short knobbed-stick I carried, which, I warrant, made him repent of his Temerity.

I had gotten into St. James's Park about four o'clock in the afternoon, and was walking very moodily by the side of the long water trench called Rosamond's Pond, when at once a desire seized hold of me to behold the Tower of London. Whether in my fantastic Imagination I deemed that I might find Tower Hill paved with gold, or pick up some Profitable Acquaintance there, it is fruitless as this distance of time to inquire. But I must needs see the Tower, and was as eager for a view of that famous Fortress as though I had been the veriest holiday-making and sight-seeing Country Cousin. I made my way into the Birdcage walk, and so through Palace-yard down to the stairs at the foot of where they were driving the first piles of that great structure which is now called Westminster Bridge. Here a Waterman agreed to take me to the Tower stairs for a shilling, which was not above thrice his legal fare, but yokels and simpletons are common prey in this great village of London. I observed more than once as he rowed me down stream that we were followed by a heavy wherry, manned by stout, smart fellows in frocks of blue duck, who kept stroke remarkably well together, and whose coxswain eyed me very narrowly. As we were shooting one of the narrow arches of London Bridge – (then covered with shops and houses, with barbicans, and traitors' heads spiked upon 'em at each end, and I have heard old people say that many a time they have fished for perch and grayling standing on the starlings of the Bridge) – this wherry fouled our craft, and my waterman burst into a volley of horrible ribald abuse, till he who was coxswain among the blue-frocked gentry spake some words to him in a low voice, at which he touched his cap, and became quite Meek and Humble. I caught him eyeing me, quite as narrowly as the steersman of the wherry had done, and when I asked him what ailed him, he stuck his Tongue in his cheek and grinned audaciously.

"Who were those rough fellows in the wherry, yonder, that fouled us?" I asked.

"Bluebottles," says he, with another grin.

"What d'ye mean, fellow?" I continued.

"Well, fresh-water fishermen, if you like," he went on, "that bait their hooks with salt worms. Will you please pay me my fare now, Master, since I am a Fellow forsooth, and Murphy's Murrain to you?"

What Murphy's Murrain was – except some term of waterside sculduddrey I did not know – but I paid the knave his shilling, whereupon he very importunately craved another sixpence to drink my health, saying that it might be a very long time before he saw me again. Now I happened only to have one and fourpence left in the world, and suspecting that I had already overpaid him, I resisted further extortion, upon which he became more and more clamorous for money, and finding that I was as obstinate as he, rested on his oars and declared that, burn him – with many other execrations too unseemly to transcribe – he would not pull a stroke further. This it seems was by no means an uncommon occurrence among the dishonest waterside knaves of those days, and it afforded vast sport to a mob of small craft that gathered round, and the people in which covered me with ridicule and abuse, calling me a Thames Bilk, and advising the waterman to hold me over the side of the boat by the scruff of the neck and give me a Ducking. I was in a great Quandary, and knew not what to do.

Meanwhile the heavy wherry, which had kept close in our offing, pulled almost on board of us, and the coxswain hailed us to know what was the matter.

"Here's a Holiday Tailor that would seek to stump a poor waterman of his fare," quoth the false scoundrel who was striving to rob me.

"'Tis a base lie!" I cried out; "I gave him a shilling at Westminster stairs to row me to the Tower wharf."

"Fare's only fourpence. Shame! shame!" cried one part of the people in the small craft.

"He's a Bilk," yelled another part of 'em. "Duck him, Goodman Crabs, duck him."

"Stop," cries the coxswain of the wherry, standing up. "It is a shame. The poor fellow shan't be put upon. Here, young man, step on board this, and we'll land you at the Tower wharf for nothing; and here, waterman, take this shilling and be d – d to you, and sheer off before you can cry Poor John."

The wherry by this time had got so close on our quarter that, thanking the blue-frocked gentlemen for their politeness, I was able to step on board the wherry without any difficulty. My thief of a waterman took the shilling which was flung to him, and again sticking his tongue in his cheek, and grinning in a more unblushing manner than before, pulled away. The crowd in the small craft set up a cheer, that had more of derision than approbation in it, and I once more heard the cry of "Blue Bottles."

These Blue Bottles, however, were as good as their word, for five minutes afterwards I was landed safe and sound at the Tower wharf. I thanked them all very heartily; but, as I had not enough money to treat them all, made bold to confess the narrowness of my means to the coxswain, begging that he, at least, would do me the honour to take a mug of flip – which could be had, double allowance, for fourpence. He clapped me, in reply, on the shoulder in the most friendly manner, and said, roast him, that he would not see me put upon; that I was evidently a lad of mettle and spirit, and that I should go with him to the "Admiral Benbow," on Little Tower Hill, close by, where he would himself stand treat for as many mugs of flip or Punch as ever I liked.

He would take no denial to his hospitable proposal, so that I accompanied him to the "Admiral Benbow," a snuggish little hostelry, about which some half a score more stout fellows in blue frocks were lounging. But these I noticed had broad leather belts round their waists, in which were stuck pistols, and to which hung cutlasses.

When we had made ourselves comfortable in the little back parlour of the "Admiral Benbow" over a steaming jug and a Pipe of Tobacco, my companion began to ask me a few questions, to which, with the ingenuous candour of youth, I made full replies. I told him that I was a young man seeking my fortune, but had as yet come only on very scurvy luck; that I had spent all my money; that I had but recently come from foreign parts, and that, in despite of finding honest employment, I had made up my mind to list for a soldier that very night.

"Don't do that, boy?" cried my friend the coxswain. "Curse pipeclay and red blanketing, and the life of a swaddy. The sea, the blue glorious sea's the place for a bold heart like you."

I answered that I knew not enough of seamanship to take the place of an officer, and that I considered the condition of a common sailor as too base for one of my bringing up.

"Ay, ay! you shall be an officer in time, my hearty," answered the Coxswain – "Lord High Admiral, for a certainty; but you must creep through the hawse-holes first. There's nothing like half-a-dozen cruises before the mast for taking the conceit out of a maple-faced hobbledehoy."

Whether I was maple-faced or not, I did not stay to argue; but there was something about the mahogany face of the coxswain that misliked me much. Now that I inspected him closely I recognised in him something of that mangonising or slave-dealing expression which is burnt in as with a Red-hot Iron upon the countenances of all those whose trade is kidnapping and man-stealing. So without more ado I rose to go, thanking him for his treat, and saying that if I went to sea it should be at my own pleasure and in my own way.