of them.

John Woodrow, as he was named, advised me not to be in a hurry, and
when I explained that my little stock of money would be exhausted
in a few days by the charges at the inn where I had put up, he
recommended me to a widow living towards Clifton, who would give me
board and lodging for a more modest sum. My anxieties on this score
being removed, I resolved to follow Woodrow's advice, and not be in
too great haste to take my first plunge. He promised to let me know
of any decent skipper who might be sailing to Southampton or London
if, when I had had a few days to think things over, my mind
remained the same.

Next day a great king's ship of three decks came into the river,
and I passed the whole morning in gazing at her, watching what went
on upon her deck, and the boatloads of mariners that came ashore
from her, envying the officers, and wavering in my design to join a
merchant vessel. The vessel was named, as I found, the Sans Pareil,
and though I had little French (the dead tongues being most thought
of at Shrewsbury), I knew the words meant "the matchless," and
certainly she outdid all the other ships around her.

The only vessel, indeed, that any way approached her was a large
brig which, as my friend Woodrow had told me the day before, was a
privateer that was being fitted out by certain gentlemen and
merchants of Bristowe for work against the French. The Bristowe
merchants had suffered great losses from the depredations made on
their ships by French corsairs. Many a vessel loaded with a rich
freight of sugar, or tobacco, or other produce of the colonies, had
fallen a prey to the enemy, who swooped out of St. Malo or Brest,
as Woodrow said, and snapped up our barques almost within sight of
their harbor. 'Twas not to be wondered at that those who had
suffered in this way should make reprisals.

The Sans Pareil had such a fascination for me (never having seen a
king's ship before) that I was only awakened to the passage of time
by the crying out of my stomach. I had promised Mistress Perry, the
widow with whom I had taken up my abode, that I would return
punctually at noon for my dinner, and now the church clocks (no
less than my hunger) told me it was long past that hour. She would
be mightily vexed, and the joint would be burned black, and I
neither wished to offend her nor to eat cinders. So I now hurried
away as fast as my legs would carry me, and soon came to the
footpath leading to Clifton.