‘Here, men,’ roared Jerry, as he twitched up the head of the prostrate man by the hair, and then allowed it to fall with a thump upon the deck, ‘slush this carrion with a bucketfull of salt water, and then tumble him down the hatchway. I warrant he don’t lie on his back in his hammock for a month of Sundays.’ These orders were speedily carried into effect, and the Portuguese having been taken below, the maintopsail was filled, and the ship again stood upon her course. In the course of the day, Jerry and Nixon came up to me together, and proposed, very civilly, that, as I was a sailor, I should join the ship for the cruise; in which case, they told me, that I should have my regular share of the prize-money as if I had been on board since they went to sea, about three months ago. Of course I had nothing for it but to agree to the proposal, although I loathed the whole set among whom I had been thus so strangely thrown. ‘Oh,’ thought I, ‘things were different on board the “Will-o’-the-Wisp,” with Stout Jem for a commander, and a hearty set of fellows under him, as honest as they were brave.’ But there was no help for it, and so my name was duly enrolled in the great book of the ‘Saucy Susan.’ This being done, I of course took up my quarters with the crew, while Rumbold was accommodated in the great cabin. It was truly a virtuous company in which I found myself enlisted, almost every second man of them having left England after having made it too hot to hold him. One young fellow, with a ready laugh and a quick eye, told me that he had been thrice left for execution in Newgate, and was each time saved by the interest of friends. At last he was sent to the plantations, where he was purchased by a confederate, and set at liberty directly. Another man told me, that he had broken half the jails in England, and boasted that there never was smith made a lock which he could not pick with a rusty nail. A third fellow had been a foot-pad on Blackheath, and fled the country with the Hue and Cry at his heels. There were many more who had been thieves and rogues all their lives, having, indeed, been brought up to that business in the streets of London, in which they had been, as it were, born, and then allowed to run wild like young savages—their hands against every man, and every man’s hands against them. By one of these men I was told, that he never knew the name of either his father or mother. The first thing he could remember was, that he used to fight with dogs in Lincoln’s Inn Fields for garbage and bones. He slept upon bunks in the streets in summer, and among the ashes in the glass-houses in winter, until having amassed money by many fortunate robberies, for, quoth he, ‘my street education made me sharp,’ he got to live in White Friars, the Mint, and places of that kind, where he cared little for either warrants or thief-takers. ‘I promise you,’ quoth he, ‘the Lord Chief Justice cannot take a man there unless