One of
these cruises cost me forty dollars, and I shall always think I was given
a horse that sailed crab-fashion, on purpose to do me out of the money. At
night, I generally went to the play, and felt bound to treat the landlord
and his family to tickets and refreshments. We always had a coach to go
in, and it was a reasonable night that cost me only ten dollars. At first
I was a sort of "king among beggars;" but as the money went, Ned's
importance went with it, until, one day, the virtuous landlord intimated
to me that it would be well, as I happened to be sober, to overhaul our
accounts. He then began to read from his books, ten dollars for this,
twenty dollars for that, and thirty for the other, until I was soon tired,
and wanted to know how much was left. I had still fifty dollars, even
according to his account of the matter; and as that might last a week,
with good management, I wanted to hear no more about the items.
All this time, I was separated from my old shipmates, being left
comparatively among strangers. Jack Mallet had gone to join his friends in
Philadelphia, and Barnet went south, whither I cannot say. I never fell in
with either of them again, it being the fate of seamen to encounter the
greatest risks and hardships in company, and then to cut adrift from each
other, with little ceremony, never to meet again. I was still young, being
scarcely two-and-twenty, and might, even then, have hauled in my oars, and
come to be an officer and a man.
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