ent with which he whealed you, and make the
Ruffian howl for mercy? Mercy, quotha! did he ever show you any? A
pretty equal match it was, surely! You a poor, weak starveling of a
child shivering in your shoes, and ill-nurtured by the coarse food he
gave you, and he a great, hulking, muscular villain, tall and
long-limbed, and all-powerful in his wretched Empire; while you were so
ignorant as not to know that the Law, were he discovered (but who was to
denounce him?), might trounce him for his barbarity. Ah! brother
Gnawbit, if I had ever caught you on board a good ship of mine! Aha!
knave, if John Dangerous would not have dubbed himself the sheerest of
asses, had he not made your back acquainted with nine good tails of
three-strand cord, with triple knots in each, and the brine-tub
afterwards. I will find out this Gnawbit yet, and cudgel him to the
death. But, alas, I rave. He must have been full five-and-forty-years
old when I first knew him, and that is nigh sixty years agone. And at a
hundred and five the cruellest Tyrant is past cudgelling.

This man had one of the prettiest houses that was to be seen in the
prettiest part of England. The place was all draped in ivy, and roses,
and eglantine, with a blooming flower-garden in front, and a luscious
orchard behind. He had a wife too who was Fair to see,--a mild little
woman, with blue eyes, who used to sit in a corner of her parlour, and
shudder as she heard the boys shrieking in the schoolroom. There was an
old infirm Gentleman that lodged with them, that had been a Captain
under the renowned Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Admiral Russell, and could
even, so it was said, remember, as a sea-boy, the Dutch being in the
Medway, in King Charles's time. This Old Gentleman seemed the only
person that Gnawbit was afraid of. He never interfered to dissuade him
from his brutalities, nay, seemed rather to encourage him therein,
crying out as the sounds of torture reached him, "Bear it! bear it! Good
again! Make 'em holloa! Make 'em dance! Cross the cuts! Dig it in! Rub
in the brine! Oho! Bear it, brave boys; there's nothing like it!" Yet
was there something jeering and sarcastic in his voice that made Gnawbit
prefer to torture his unhappy scholars when the Old Gentleman was
asleep,--and even then he would sometimes wake up and cry out, "Bear
it!" from the attic, or when he was being wheeled about the
neighbourhood in a sick man's chair.

The first morning I saw the Old Gentleman he