eyes just in time to see the monster, big as he
was, bolt right through the door, carrying my boat-hook with him. I
rushed after him to try and get it back, for it was a new ash one I had
bought but a few days before, and I did not want to lose it, but I only
knocked my head a hard rap against the door, and though I looked about
everywhere I never could find it from that day to this; and that, mates,
mind you, is the circumstantial and voracious way Jerry Vincent lost his
boat-hook." And the old man gave one of his comical and expressive
winks, and a pull at the glass of swisell which my uncle had placed by
his side.

"Don't you all acknowledge that that story was well worth half-a-crown
to a Lonnoner, seeing as how it was quite new, and he could never have
heard it afore? Of course you'll all agree with me, now, to my mind,
those Lonnoners are generally such know-nothing sort of chaps, though
they think themselves so wise that they never will believe what you tell
'em. They are just like the old lady whose nevy had just come from sea.
When he told her that he'd seen flying-fish scores of times, she said
he was trying to hoax her, and wouldn't listen to him, but when he said
he'd been up the Red Sea, and that the water there was the colour of a
soldier's coat, she said that she had no doubt about that, and that she
was glad to listen to him when he spoke the truth. But," continued
Jerry, who had now got into his talkative vein, "what I have been
telling you is as nothing to what happened to me soon after then. I had
been ill for some time, and could not tell what was the matter with me,
when I happened one day to go to Portsdown fair. I thought the walk
would do me good, and I wanted to see some of the fun going on. Well,
after I had been to see the beasts and the raree shows, and the
tumblers, and theatres, and conjurers, and taken a turn in a roundabout,
on a wooden horse, which I found more easy to ride than a real one,
because, do ye see, the wooden one never kicks, while, to speak the
truth, whenever I've got on a regular-built animal, he to a certainty
has shied up his stern and sent me over his bows, sometimes right into a
hedge, or a ditch, or a pond, or through a window, into a shop, or
parlour, I happened to catch sight of a man standing at the end of an
outlandish sort of a cart or a van, painted all over with red and
yellow, and blue and gold, with a sort of a Chinaman's temple at one end
of it.

"