ar boy, let this be a warning to you; think
well of it, for you have escaped a great danger: the money shall be
returned. Go now, my child, to your employment; and if you do receive
only halfpence, you will have the satisfaction of feeling that they are
honestly obtained."

I can assure the reader that this was a lesson which I never forgot; it
was, however, succeeded by another variety of temptation, which might
have proved more dangerous to a young and ardent spirit, had it not
ended as it did, in changing the course of my destiny and throwing me
into a new path of action: to this I shall now refer.

Hardly a month passed but we received additional pensioners into the
hospital. Among others, a man was sent to the hospital who went by the
name of Sam Spicer. I say went by the name, as it was not the custom
for the seamen to give their real names when they were entered or
pressed into the service, and of course they were discharged into the
hospital by the same name which they bore on the ship's books. Spicer
was upwards of six feet in height, very large boned, and must, when he
was in his prime, have been a man of prodigious strength. When he was
admitted to the hospital he was nearly sixty years of age; his hair was
black and grey mixed, his complexion very dark, and his countenance
fierce and unprepossessing. He went by the name of Black Sam, on
account of his appearance. He had lost his right hand in a frigate
action, and to the stump he had fixed a sort of socket, into which he
screwed his knife and the various articles which he wished to make use
of--sometimes a file, sometimes a saw--having had every article made to
fit into the socket, for he had been an armourer on board ship, and was
very handy at such work. He was, generally speaking, very morose and
savage to everybody, seldom entered into conversation, but sat apart, as
if thinking, with a frown upon his countenance, and his eyes surmounted
with bushy eyebrows, fixed upon the ground. The pensioners who belonged
to the same ward said that he talked in his sleep, and from what they
could collect at those times he must have been a pirate; but no one
dared to speak to him on the subject, for more than once he had been
punished for striking those who had offended him; indeed, he nearly
killed one old man who was jesting with him when he was at work, having
made a stab at him with his knife screwed in his socket, but his foot
slipped, and the blow misse