he returning smacks carried unpleasant
reports about him. At times, like Robert Burns, George Morland, and men
of that kidney, he would give way to a passionate burst of repentance;
but in his case the repentance always departed with the return of health
and buoyancy.

One night he stayed on board a coper until a breeze came away; he then
insisted on straddling across the bow of the boat on the return journey,
and he lost his grip for once in his life and went overboard. A dip of
that sort, with heavy sea-boots on, is rather dangerous, and Master Jack
felt as though all the water in the North Sea was dragging at his legs;
but he was hauled in at last. Even that experience only cured him for a
week, and then his resorts to the brandy-bottle began again.

At last, when he was putting fish aboard the carrier, a letter was
handed to him; he looked at it with rough tenderness, and crammed it,
all greasy and gruesome, under his jumper. On getting aboard, he went to
a quiet corner where the men could not tease, and he read,

"Dear John,--I write these few lines hoping you are quite well as this
leaves me at present, but i don't think as you can be well if all is
trew as we hear you are very wild and you ont have no money to come home
if you doant watshe it. You must either stop the beer or stop goin with
me and then my heart would be broak, every girl I see which married a
drinking man has supped sorrow for sertain, and the man the same, and
you will be just the same. Pray, my dear, do take the right tirning, or
I must keap my word. So no more at present from your loveing SARAH
KERRISON."

Jack cursed once, and then muttered "Werra well, let her. Let her go and
take on some one better;" but he was amazingly unhappy despite his
defiance, and his unhappiness drove him to frantic excesses. He used to
scare his companions by saying, "If God takes my girl, they can talk
about Him as they like, but He shan't take my soul, not if I damn for
it." Then when the shuddering men said, "For mercy's sake, shut up.
It's enough to sink the wessel," he would make answer, "Werra good, let
her sink; and the sooner the better."

The days wore away, and the time came for Jack to run home. The smack
was well clear of the fleets and spinning along nicely to southward on a
dark night, and Jack was at the wheel. His nerve was just a little
touched, and he muttered, "This is a devil of a night. I wish we were
well home."

It was indeed a weird n