But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road, whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years' cruise. Pepys, who happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667, met several of the crew of the "Cambridge," and describes them in a manner so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little consideration for the Secretary to the Admiralty. At any rate, he pictures them as being "the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were in the Navy, just like their prophane commander." My certes, sirs! just imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his ciphered "Diary." [Sidenote: _THE SAILOR'S RETURN_] That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ashore on this route, and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever after. "Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses," says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards. It was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, "salt horse," and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable, and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.'s had their wages _raised_ to a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates were given) in the House of Commons that some ships' companies had not been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system, or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty