I Have A
Suspicion That Spree Was Meant To Be A Long One; But God Disposes
All Things; And One Morning, Near Westminster Bridge, Whom Should
He Come Across But The Very Sergeant Who Had Recruited Him At
First!
What followed?
He himself indicated cavalierly that he had
then resigned. Let us put it so. But these resignations are
sometimes very trying.
At length, after having delighted us for hours, he took himself
away from the companion; and I could ask Mackay who and what he
was. 'That?' said Mackay. 'Why, that's one of the stowaways.'
'No man,' said the same authority, 'who has had anything to do with
the sea, would ever think of paying for a passage.' I give the
statement as Mackay's, without endorsement; yet I am tempted to
believe that it contains a grain of truth; and if you add that the
man shall be impudent and thievish, or else dead-broke, it may even
pass for a fair representation of the facts. We gentlemen of
England who live at home at ease have, I suspect, very insufficient
ideas on the subject. All the world over, people are stowing away
in coal-holes and dark corners, and when ships are once out to sea,
appearing again, begrimed and bashful, upon deck. The career of
these sea-tramps partakes largely of the adventurous. They may be
poisoned by coal-gas, or die by starvation in their place of
concealment; or when found they may be clapped at once and
ignominiously into irons, thus to be carried to their promised
land, the port of destination, and alas!
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