they mightn't like it!"

About the end of the second act he began to show signs of being dead
beat, and I sent him round a pot of stout to help him on, for I
regularly felt for him. We applauded all we could, too. The pit
ceiling was a sufferer that night, so I don't deceive you; but it was no
good. No one else applauded a bit. Some of them hissed. Indeed, if it
had not been for my mates being my mates, and sticking to me and Jones,
as in duty bound, I believe they'd have hissed, too. As it was, when
the act-drop fell, and we all went out for a liquor, they weren't
over-anxious to come back again, only they did, of course.

The last act was very cruel. I think the stout had got into Jones's
head, and into his legs, too; for he was all over the stage, and, we
fancied, half his time, didn't know what he was up to. Then came the
great situation, where he was to board the pirate schooner
single-handed, and rescue his lady-love--and, in the name of everything
that is awfully dreadful, what do you think happened to Jones then?

It might have been something wrong in the scenery, or it might have been
something wrong with Jones, but he appeared on the upper deck of the
pirate boat, and was going to jump down on the lower deck, flourishing a
cutlass, when he somehow slipped, and caught behind.

I shall never forget it. He caught somehow by the trousers, and hung
there, dangling like an old coat on a peg. Then he tore himself loose
with a great wrench, while every one in the house was screaming with
laughter, and rushed off the stage.

We took poor Jones away that night, and we liquored him up a lot, and he
wept as he told us what he had gone through, and somehow we couldn't,
laugh much as we listened to him.

I don't know how it happened. I think he said he would go on board with
us, and have a final glass, and he was to come back in a boat that had
taken some goods on board from the shore. I don't know how it was, I
say; but six hours after we had got fairly out to sea, some one found a
pair of legs sticking out from behind something, and at the end of these
legs were Jones's head and body.

When we had shaken him out of a dead sleep, he asked to be put on shore
at once, and talked wildly of bringing an action against the skipper.
But the skipper put it to Jones in a jocular kind of way, that the
general practice was to keel-haul stowaways, when you felt inclined to
treat them kindly, or heave them overboard