At last my landlord told me my money was all expended, and that I must look out for something to do. My shipmates were in a similar dilemma, their number decreasing every day, as one after another shipped in the various merchant vessels preparing for sea. Alas! for our farmers in perspective. Their dreams of ploughing the land evaporated, leaving them what they were before, and what most of them remained until death, the ploughmen of the ocean. My landlord’s gentle hint put a stop to my excesses, for the very sufficient reason that it was attended with a protest on my further checks for funds. For a while, I found employment in loading and unloading ships, and in assisting to fit them for sea. But this proving an uncertain employment, I was induced to join a number of my fellow-boarders in going to the rendezvous of the United States brig _Boxer_. Here we shipped for two years more. I was then eighteen years of age, and was rated as an ordinary seaman, with ten dollars per month wages. Behold me then, dear reader, once more on board a man of war, in spite of all the dangers I had escaped, and the promises I had made to risk myself no more on the ocean! The next chapter will unfold the events which transpired while I sailed in the _Boxer_. CHAPTER XI On shipping in the _Boxer_, I received three months’ advance, which, excepting a small sum expended for clothing, fell into the hands of my rapacious landlord. How much this gentleman contrived to filch from me, it is not in my power to say; but that he was well paid, I have no doubt. He had my hundred dollars, my advance, all I earned for working on the wharves, and nine dollars beside, which I obtained from the purser. All this, according to his account, I spent in a few weeks, with the exception of a very small sum laid out for clothing. As I had no means of proving his statements false, there was no alternative but submission, and a return to a life of toil and danger, to earn a fresh supply.