tice, carrying your indentures with you?"

"I am not, and I don't know what you mean."

"Then the fact of the matter is," said the Midshipmite, with a chuckle,
"that we've got the law of _you_. The King, God bless him, wants stout
and gallant hearts to man his fleet, and you're about the likeliest
young fellow I've seen this week; so the best thing you can do is to go
willingly on board the Tower Tender, of which I have the honour to be
second in command. If you won't, the fact of the matter is that we must
make you."

"But why should I go with you?" I urged.

"The fact of the matter is that you're Pressed," coolly answered the
Midshipmite, or midshipman, "and if you want to see the warrant, you may
ask Davy Jones for it, who keeps it under three seals in his locker to
prevent accidents."

Between listing for a soldier and being pressed for a sailor there was
not, I take it, much difference. Either way, the chance of a livelihood
offered itself. But I did not like this violent way of doing things, and
I told the midshipman so. He merely ordered his blue-frocks to take me
away. Then I attempted to burst my bonds, and bit, kicked, and
struggled, so that it took half-a-dozen men to drag me to the door.

"The fact of the matter is," remarked the midshipman, filling himself a
glass of punch, "that there's always this hullabaloo at the first going
off, and that you'd better give him One for peace and quietness."

Somebody immediately followed the officer's advice, and gave me One with
the butt end of a pistol, which nearly clove my skull in twain, and
certainly made me peaceable and quietness, for it stunned me.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

JOHN DANGEROUS IS IN THE SERVICE OF KING GEORGE.

IT now becomes expedient for me to pass over no less than Fifteen Years
of my momentous Career. I am led to do this for divers cogent Reasons,
two of which I will forthwith lay before my Reader. For the first, let
me urge a Decent Prudence. It is not, Goodness knows, that I have any
thing to be ashamed of which should hinder me from giving a Full, True,
and Particular Account of all the Adventures that befell me in these
same fifteen Years, with the same Minute Particularity which I bestowed
upon my Unhappy Childhood, my varied Youth, and stormy Adolescence. I
did dwell, perhaps, with a fonder circumspection and more scrupulous
niceness upon those early days, inasmuch as the things we have first
known and suffered are