o make
him kiss 'em all round; but I was al'ays milk-an'-water along side of
women, if they topped at all above my rating. "Well," thinks I, "my lad,
I wouldn't ha' said five minutes agone there was anything of the green
about ye yet, but I see it will take another voy'ge to wash it all out."
For to my thinkin', mates, 'tis more of a land-lubber to come the rig
over a few poor creatures that never saw blue water, than not to know
the ropes you warn't told. "O Mister Jacobs!" says Missus Collins to me
that night, before I went off, "d'ye think Edward's tired of that ere
horridsome sea yet?" "Well, marm," I says, "I'm afeard not. But I'll
tell ye, marm," says I, "if you want's to make him cut the consarn, the
only thing ye can do is to get him bound apprentice to it. From what
I've seen of him, he's a lad that won't bear aught again his liberty;
an' I do believe, if he thought he couldn't get free, he'd run the next
day!" Well, after that, ye see, I didn't know what more turned up of it;
for I went myself round to Hull, and ships in a timber-craft for the
Baltic, just to see some'at new.

One day, the third voy'ge from that time, on getting the length of
Blackwall, we heared of a strong press from the men-o'-war; and as I'd
got a dreadful dislike to the sarvice, there was a lot of us
marchant-men kept stowed away close in holes an' corners till we could
suit ourselves. At last we got well tired, and a shipmate o' mine and I
wanted to go and see our sweethearts over in the town. So we hired the
slops from a Jew, and makes ourselves out to be a couple o' watermen,
with badges to suit, a carrying off a large parcel and a ticket on it.
In the arternoon we came back again within sight of the Tower, where we
saw the coast was clear, and made a fair wind along Rosemary Lane and
Cable Street. Just then we saw a tall young fellow, in a brown coat, an'
a broad-brim hat, standing in the door of a shop, with a paper under his
arm, on the look out for some one. "Twig the Quaker, Bob!" my shipmate
says to me. As soon as he saw us, out the Quaker steps, and says he to
Bill, in a sleepy sort of a v'ice, "Friend, thou'rt a waterman, I
b'lieve?" "D---- it, yes," says Bill, pretty short like, "that's what we
hails for! D'ye want a boat, master?" "Swear not, friend," says the
broad-brim; "but what I want is this, you see. We have a large vessel,
belonging to our house, to send to Havannah, and willin' to give double
wages, but we can't find