To begin with, he caught me on the hop; at a moment of rumours and serious warnings, and thoroughly pure indignation on my part. At the moment, I said (and he made me sign) that I was prepared to ship with him. After which he held me fast, and frightened me with the land-crabs, and gave me no chance to get out of his jaws. I tried to make him laugh with some of the many jokes and stories, which everybody knows of mine, and likes them for long acquaintance' sake. However, not one of them moved him so much as to fetch one squirt of tobacco-juice. This alone enabled him to take a strong lead over me. Every time that he was bound to laugh, according to human nature, and yet had neither a wag in his nose, nor a pucker upon his countenance, nor even so much as a gleam in his eye, so many times I felt in my heart that this man was the wise man, and that laughter is a folly. And I had to bottle down the laughs (which always rise inside of me, whenever my joke has the cream on it) until I could find some other fellow fit to understand me; because I knew that my jokes were good. When I found no means of backing out from that degrading contract, my very first thought was to do strict justice to our association, and atone for the loss of my services to it. Therefore, in case of anything undesirable befalling me--in short, if I should be ordered aloft with no leave to come down again--there I made my will, and left my property to establish credit, for a new start among them. Chairs and tables, knives and forks, iron spoons, brought into the family by my wife's grandfather, several pairs of duds of my own, and sundry poles, as before described, also nets to a good extent--though some had gone under usury--bait-kettles, I forget how many, and even my character in a silk-bag; item, a great many sundry things of almost equal value; the whole of which I bravely put into my will, and left them. And knowing that the proper thing is to subscribe a codicil, therein I placed a set of delf, and after that my blessing. Eighteenpence I was compelled to pay for this pious document to a man who had been turned out of the law because he charged too little. And a better shilling-and-sixpence worth of sense, with heads and tails to it, his lordship the Bishop of Llandaff will own that he never set seal upon; unless I make another one. Only I felt it just to leave my boat entire to Bardie.