"Well, I was come home from a short trip, and one day Leftenant Collins hunts me up at Wapping Docks, where I'd had myself spliced, six years before, to Betsy Brown, an' was laid up for a spell, having seen a good deal of the sea. Ye must know the young leftenant was fell deep in love with a rich Indy naboob's daughter, which had come over to take her back to the East Ingees. The old fellow was hard close-hauled again the match, notwithstanding of the young folks makin' it all up; so he'd taken out berths aboard of a large company's ship, and bought over the captain on no account to let any king's navy man within the gangways, nor not a shoulder with a swab upon it, red or blue, beyond the ship's company. But, above all, the old tyrant wouldn't have a blue-jacket, from stem to starn, if so be he'd got nothing ado but talk sweet; I s'pose he fancied his girl was mad after the whole blessed cloth. The leftenant turns over this here log to me, and, says he, 'I'll follow her to the world's end, if need be, Bob, and cheat the old villain!' 'Quite right, too, sir,' says I. 'Bob,' says he,' I'll tell you what I wants you for to do. Go you and enter for the _Seringapatam_ at Blackwall, if you're for sea just now; I'm goin' for to s'cure my passage myself, an' no doubt doorin' the voy'ge something'll turn up to set all square; at any rate, I'll stand by for a rope to pull!' 'Why, here's a rum go!' thinks I to myself. 'Is Ned Collins got so green again, spite of all that's come and gone, for to think the waves is a-goin' to work wonders, or ould Neptune under the line's to play the parson and splice all!' 'Well, sir,' I says, 'but don't you think the skipper will smoke your weather-roll, sir, at sea, as you did Bill Pikes an' me, you know, sir?' says I. 'Oh, Bob, my lad,' says the leftenant, 'leave you that to me. The fellow most onlikest to a sailor on the Indyman's poop will be me, and that's the way you'll know me.'