“I know it, Jacob,” answered the traveller; “an’ hard though you hit, you never hit hard enough to cure me of lying. ’Tis a damned vice, an’ I never yet told a fib as paid for telling. But ’twasn’t you cured me; ’twas a man by the name of Mistley, the bo’sun of the ship I sailed in. I told un a stramming gert lie, an’ he found it out, an’—well, if you want to know what a proper dressing-down be, you ax a seafaring man to lay it on. In them days they didn’t reckon they’d begun till they’d drawed blood out of ’e; an’ so often as not they’d give ’e a bucket of salt water down your back arter, just so as you shouldn’t forget where they’d been busy. One such hiding I got from Mistley, an’ never wanted another. I’d so soon have told that man a second lie as I’d told God one to His shining face. An’ long after, to show I don’t bear no malice, when I fell on my feet, I went down to the port when my old ship comed in again two years later, an’ in my pocket was five golden pounds for Mistley. Only he’d gone an’ died o’ yellow jack in the meantime down to the Plate, so he never got it. An’ you boys there, remember what I say, an’ never tell no lies if you want to get on an’ pocket good wages come presently. ’Tis more than thirty years ago, an’ the man that did it dust; yet I wriggles my shoulders an’ feels the flesh crawl on my spine to this day when I thinks of it. “But I’m gwaine too fast, for I haven’t sailed from Plymouth yet. Us went off in due course, an’ I seed the wonders of the deep, an’ I can’t say I took to ’em; but there—I’d gone for a sailor, an’ a sailor I thought ’twould have to be. Us got to a place by name of Barbados in the West Indies presently—Bim for short. A flat pancake of an island, with not much to tell about ’cept that there’s only a bit of brown paper between it an’ a billet I hope none of us won’t never go to. Hot as—as need be, no doubt; but there was better to come, for presently we ups anchor an’ away to St. Vincent—a place as might make you think heaven couldn’t be better; an’ then down to Grenada, another island so lovely as a fairy story; an’ then Trinidad—where the Angostura bitters comes from, Mrs. Capern—an’ then a bit of a place by name of Tobago, as you could put down on Dartymoor a’most an’ leave some to double up all round. Yet, ’pon that island, neighbours, I’ve lived my life, an’ done my duty, I hope, an’ got well thought upon by black, white an’ brindled; for in them islands I should tell you the people be most every shade you could name but green. Butter-coloured, treacle-coloured, putty-coloured, saffron-coloured, peat-coloured, an’ every colour; an’ sometimes, though a chap may have the face of a nigger—lips an’ nose an’ wool an’ all—yet he’ll be so white as a dog’s tooth; an’ you know there’s blood from Europe hid in him somewheres. They’m a mongrel people; yet they’ve got souls—just as much as they Irish-Americans; an’ God He knows if they’ve