My right forefinger and the top of my thumb I lost just thirty year ago when Admiral Tiddiman fought the Dutch in the harbor of Bergen. On the _Hector_, Captain John Cuttle’s ship, I was. We ran afoul a Dutch broadside, and down we went like a tub with a grindstone in it. Only a score of us came up again, and me, with my maimed hand, had to swim more than an hour for my life. A man who has given his limbs for his country to be stretched at Execution Dock with no more to do than if he were a common picklock! Ah! what a port has old Bill May’s ship come to at last! It does not become a man who has fought for England to whine at the king’s court. But charity begins at home; and from a kindness to the respectable name of May I am taking a quill in my fist to set out in order the things that brought me here--and shouldn’t have--which things the lawyers confabulated me out of properly telling at my trial. The way the long-gowns[1] talked you would have thought they and not we were the ones to be hanged. Begging everybody’s pardon, I ask who ought to do the most talking--accuser or accused? [1] Lawyers. His Lordship, Judge Holt--who was master of the court--was pretty fair, but those king’s counsel blasted the whole dozen or more judges with words, words, words, till I looked to see them all blown through the wall of Old Bailey--and the big bench with ’em. Half the time those lawyers didn’t speak a man’s English, but yammered in a foreign tongue, calling us names we knew not what. Some of it sounded to me like Portugee.[2] Jack Sparkes[3] swore from keel to truck it was Irish. But when we came to talk, how was it then? [2] Law-latin: “_Hostes humanis generis_”, etc. [3] A co-defendant. “Speak to the point, my man.” And, “What have you more to say?” If we had had anything to saw, how could we have said it with no lawyer to pilot us over the law language and to throw outlandish words back at our prosecutors? Nay, more. From jury to judges they were all land crabs. Asks Judge Holt-- “What do you mean by ‘conning a ship?’” Begging their honors’ pardon, I ask, Could that be a fair trial for sailormen? A baby at the breast ought to know that conning a ship is a-steering of her. Did I have to ship on the _Charles the Second_? Was I pressed? Never has the press-gang picked up old Bill May when he was sober. How often have I led the gang myself! Who was it grabbed half a score knock-kneed apprentices for the _Hector_ and other of the king’s ships under Admiral Tiddiman? Only Bill May, the pirate. No, indeed. Captain Brake of the _Wave_, East Indiaman, was begging me to voyage with him to Calicut, but I said, “No, here is Sir James Houblon outfitting _costa-gardas_ for the Spanish South Americas; here,” said I, “is where they need men who can keep an edge to a cutlass, and where I am wanted there I always try to be.” I was wanted at Bergen against the Dutch thirty year ago, and there I was--as witness my finger and thumb.