, opened not his lips, until he had performed the best half of
his journey. But Thomas, notwithstanding his irony appearance, was in
reality composed of flesh and blood. His desire being titillated by
the contact of a buxom wench, whose right arm embraced his middle as he
rode, his thoughts began to mutiny against his master, and he found
it almost impossible to withstand the temptation of making love.
Nevertheless, he wrestled with these rebellious suggestions with all
the reason that Heaven had enabled him to exert; and that being totally
overcome, his victorious passion suddenly broke out in this address:

"'Sblood! I believe master thinks I have no more stuff in my body than
a dried haddock, to turn me adrift in the dark with such a spanker. D'ye
think he don't, my dear?" To this question his fellow-traveller replied,
"Swanker anan!" And the lover resumed his suit, saying, "Oons! how you
tickle my timber! Something shoots from your arm, through my stowage,
to the very keelstone. Han't you got quicksilver in your
hand?"--"Quicksilver!" said the lady, "d--n the silver that has crossed
my hand this month; d'ye think, if I had silver, I shouldn't buy me a
smock?"--"Adsooks! you baggage," cried the lover, "you shouldn't want
a smock nor a petticoat neither, if you could have a kindness for a
true-hearted sailor, as sound and strong as a nine-inch cable, that
would keep all clear above board, and everything snug under the
hatches."--"Curse your gum!" said the charmer, "what's your gay balls
and your hatches to me?"--"Do but let us bring-to a little," answered
the wooer, whose appetite was by this time whetted to a most ravenous
degree, "and I'll teach you to box the compass, my dear. Ah! you
strapper, what a jolly b-- you are!"--"B--!" exclaimed this modern
dulcinea, incensed at the opprobrious term; "such a b-- as your mother,
you dog! D-- you, I've a good mind to box your jaws instead of your
comepiss. I'll let you know, as how I am meat for your master, you saucy
blackguard. You are worse than a dog, you old flinty-faced, flea-bitten
scrub. A dog wears his own coat, but you wear your master's."

Such a torrent of disgraceful epithets from a person who had no clothes
at all, converted the gallant's love into choler, and he threatened to
dismount and seize her to a tree, when she should have a taste of
his cat-o'-nine-tails athwart her quarters; but, instead of being
intimidated by his menaces, she set him at defiance, a