When I had attended to all that required being seen to by me acting as the mate of the ship, I went aft to Captain Spalding, who was walking the deck alone, smoking a pipe, and said to him, “It’s going to be a fine night.” “I believe you are right,” said he, gazing into the dusk of the evening, amid which the near shipping looked pale, and the more distant craft dark and swollen. “Are you going ashore?” said I. “No,” he answered. “There’s nothing at Deal to call me ashore. I know Deal and I don’t love it, Bill.” “I should like to shake Uncle Joe by the hand,” said I. “So you shall,” said he. “But see here, my lad, you must keep a bright lookout on the weather. If ever you’re to keep your weather eye lifting ’tis whilst you are visiting Uncle Joe, for should there come a slant of wind, I’m off! there’ll be no stopping to send ashore to let you know that I’m going.” “Right you are,” cried I heartily, “a bright lookout shall be kept. But there’ll be no slant of wind this night--a little thunder, but no wind,” said I, catching as I spoke the dim sheen of distant lightning coming and going in a winking sort of way upon the mass of stuff that overhung the coast of France. I stepped below into my cabin to change my clothes. It will not be supposed that my slender wardrobe showed very handsomely after two years of hard wear. I put on the best garments I had, a shaggy pilot coat, with large horn buttons, and a velvet waistcoat, and on my head I seated a round hat with a small quantity of ribbon floating down abaft it, so that on the whole my appearance was rather that of a respectable forecastle hand than that of the chief mate of a ship. Here whilst I am brushing my hair before a bit of broken looking glass in my cabin let me give you in a few sentences a description of myself. And first of all, having been born in the year 1790, I was aged twenty-four, but looked a man of thirty, owing to the many years I had passed at sea and the rough life of the calling. I was about five foot eleven in height, shouldered and chested in proportion, very strong on my legs, which were slightly curved into a kind of easy bowling, rolling air by the ceaseless slanting of decks under me; in short taking me altogether you would fairly have termed me at that age of twenty-four a fine young fellow. I was fair, with dark reddish hair and dark blue eyes, which the girls sometimes called violet; my cheeks and chin were smooth shaven, according to the practice of those times; my teeth very good, white, and even; my nose straight, shapely, and proper, but in my throat and neck I was something heavy. Such was I, William Fielding, at the age of twenty-four. I write without vanity. God knows it is too late for vanity! Suppose a ghost capable of thinking: figure it musing upon the ashes of the body it had occupied--ashes moldering and infragrant in a clay-rotted coffin twelve foot deep. Even as such a ghost might muse, so write I of my youth.