edst not
starve (bar cutpurses) for two-and-forty days; thou hast a knowledge of
the French tongue," (which I picked up from a Huguenot emigrant from
Languedoc, who was a Barber at Kingston, and taught me for well-nigh
nothing), "and art cunning of Fence. Be the world thine Oyster, as the
Playactor has it, and e'en open it with a Spadapoint." In this not
unwholesome frame of mind I came out of the ship _Gebrueder_, and set
foot on the Port with something like a Defiance of Fortune's scurvy
tricks fermenting within me.

The Shipmaster recommended me to a very cleanly Tavern, by the sign of
the Red Goose, kept in the Ganz-Straet by a widow-woman named Giessens.
'Twas Goose here, Goose there, and Goose every where, so it seemed with
this good Frau; for she served Schiedam at the sign of the Goose, and
she lived in Goose Street. She had herself a long neck and a round body
and flat feet, going waddling and hissing about the house, a-scolding of
her maids, like any Michaelmas matron among the stubble; not to forget
her children, of whom she had a flock, waddling and hissing in their
little way too, and who were all as like goslings as Sherris is like
Sack. Little would have lacked for her to give me hot roast goose to my
dinner, and goose-pie for supper, and some unguent of goose-grease to
anoint my Pate with, had it chanced to be broken; and truly if I had
lived under the sign of the Goose for many days, I might have taken to
waddling and hissing too in my own Generation, and have been in time as
brave a goose as any of them. Here there was a civil enough company of
Seafaring men, Mates, Pilots, Supercargoes, and the like, with some
Holland traders, and, if I mistake not, a few Smugglers that had
contraband dealings in Cambrics, Steenkirks, Strong waters, and Point of
Bruxelles. These last worthies did I carefully avoid; for since my
Boyish Mischances I had imbibed a wholesome fear of hurting the King's
Revenue, or meddling in any way with his Prerogative. "Well out of it,
Jack Dangerous," I said. "Touch not His Majesty's Deer, nor His
Majesty's Customs, and there shall be no sense of a tickling in thy
windpipe when thou passest a post that is like unto the sign of the
Tyburn Tavern." 'Tis astonishing how gingerly a man will walk who has
once been within an ace of dancing upon nothing.

There is a mighty quantity of Sand and good store of Mud at Ostend, and
a very comforting smell of fish; and so the High Dutch gentry, who