His hands and feet were enormous, and when I shook hands with him at his request, my decent-sized fist looked like a baby’s in his huge paw. He was not only tall, but he was large-framed, and well built in every way; a man of enormous strength, and, as I soon found, of prodigious appetite. He had, so the showman informed us, just been captured from the plough in Yorkshire, and the showman was taking him round, and paying him double as much as he could earn by his work as an agricultural labourer. The giant liked the nomadic life, and the princely sum of eighteen shillings a week made him something of a Crœsus compared with other working men. Somehow I could not take to the man, although he seemed to show a great partiality for me; he was rough, coarse of speech, and of a pugnacious temperament; but, except for one or two little bickerings, a very pleasant evening was spent, and the showman, who was in his cups, insisted upon seeing Captain Cooper back to the ship, as the Captain could not steer straight; in fact, he could scarce make headway at all, as his legs would cross and keep tripping him up. The end of it was that the showman’s horse was brought out, the Captain strapped on his back, and the showman hoisted up behind, to navigate the steed to the quay. Jim the ostler followed quietly behind on foot, and returned an hour later with the horse, informing my father that he had left both skipper and showman fast asleep on the cabin floor. Then we went to bed, and saw no more of the tipsy showman till ten o’clock next morning, when he turned up at the “Jolly Waggoner” looking very seedy. Well, now having introduced my _dramatis personæ_, I must say a few words concerning the ship, the lively little _Ladybird_. She was a trim little oak-built brig of some 200 tons, well found in gear and stores, and carried beside the skipper, a mate, three hands, and a cook, to which please add your humble servant as articled apprentice. Our cargo was a very miscellaneous one, and consisted principally of barreled beef and pork, cloth, linen, beer, spirits, hardware and cutlery, for we were bound on a trading expedition to the Faroe Islands, where we were to take in a cargo of salt-fish, bird-skins, fur, guano, seal-skins, oil, etc., in exchange for the goods we were taking out, as very little ready money is in circulation in those out-of-the-way isles. The skipper did not expect to be gone more than two months, as the distance from Yarmouth to the Faroes is not more than a thousand miles, inclusive of touching at the Orkneys and Shetland _en route_; so when I bade my father farewell on the quay, I anticipated being back for my birthday on the 10th of June, but my case was only one more exemplification of the adage, “Man proposes, but God disposes,” as will be seen.