ind. See 'ere"; and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me
was stolen. "O," says he, "let me see him try; I dare him to; I'll do
for him! O, he ain't the first!" And he confirmed it with a poor, silly,
ugly oath.

I have never felt such pity for any one in this wide world as I felt for
that half-witted creature; and it began to come over me that the brig
_Covenant_ (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon
the seas.

"Have you no friends?" said I.

He said he had a father in some English seaport, I forget which. "He was
a fine man, too," he said; "but he's dead."

"In heaven's name," cried I, "can you find no reputable life on shore?"

"O no," says he, winking and looking very sly; "they would put me to a
trade. I know a trick worth two of that, I do!"

I asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed,
where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and
sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. He said it
was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a
pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it
like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called
stick-in-the-mud boys. "And then it's not all as bad as that," says he;
"there's worse off than me: there's the twenty-pounders. O laws! you
should see them taking on. Why, I've seen a man as old as you, I
dessay"--(to him I seemed old)--"ah, and he had a beard too--well, and
as soon as we cleared out of the river, and he had the drug out of his
head--my! how he cried and carried on! I made a fine fool of him, I tell
you! And then there's little uns, too: O, little by me! I tell you, I
keep them in order. When we carry little uns, I have a rope's-end of my
own to wollop 'em." And so he ran on, until it came in on me what he
meant by twenty-pounders were those unhappy criminals who were sent
over-seas to slavery in North America, or the still more unhappy
innocents who were kidnapped or trepanned (as the word went) for private
interest or vengeance.

Just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the Ferry
and the Hope. The Firth of Forth (as is very well known) narrows at this
point to the width of a good-sized river, which makes a convenient ferry
going north, and turns the upper reach into a land-locked haven for all
manner of ships. Right in the midst of the narrows lies an islet with
some ruins; on the south