Another told us how his cabin-boy (he was himself a sea-captain) jumped over-board in a rough sea, to recover a mop; which he had accidentally let fall. He succeeded; but it was at the risk of his life. ‘I asked him,’ said the captain, ‘how he came to do such a thing? and the little hell-spawn told me, “he was afraid I should _give him the cat_; if the mop had been lost.”—I’ll give it you to some tune, lubber, said I, if you do such a thing again.’—So much for a captain’s humanity. This is no bad instance of the general despotism exercised on board of ships. Fine writing will object to the coarseness of phraseology in this letter; and, under other circumstances, I would not give fine writing such cause of complaint: but, were it changed in this place, we should no longer be in company with sea-captains and passengers from Billingsgate in a Gravesend boat. LETTER III We parted during a calm, in my last; but remember we are not yet at Gravesend. In wit, vulgar or refined, puns are more frequent agents than wits generally suppose. Hearing a child cry in a woman’s arms, a sailor exclaimed—‘So! We have a squall: we shall soon have a breeze.’—‘Yes,’ replied a second, ‘I hope another hand will be put to the bellows.’ It so happened that the punster was a prophet. The sails swelled; and the steersman told us ‘we could not have a better wind, if we had bought one.’ To which another added—‘he wished he could find the way to the weather-office.’ I doubt if there be a nation existing more skilful and alert, on the water, than the English. The Thames in particular, has vessels so numerous, and of such various kinds, riding and traversing its waves in such endless directions, that the unaccustomed eye is confused in its attempts to distinguish and individualize the moving multitude. Ships, snows, brigs, sloops, cutters, barges, lighters, boats, vessels of every form and size, and from all regions of the Earth! My heart beat, while I watched the dexterity with which they mutually shunned the shocks, that at every returning moment, threatened each other with oversetting. Of this we were once in danger. The steersman of a heavy barge, had his attention called away, perhaps not three-seconds, from his duty; and it was with the utmost exertion, and presence of mind, that the active fellows on board the Charlotte kept her from running foul of the barge. The danger past, they were enraged; and began to rate the barge-man: who, angry with and ashamed of himself, bade them in a surly tone ‘mind their own business.’ ‘You don’t mind yours,’ aptly retorted one of them. ‘I’ll be damned if you are he that set the Thames on fire.’