e poachers. The
punishment gives a man a few weeks of privation and months of adulation.
He bears no malice; he simply goes and poaches again. No burglar ever
brags of his exploits; the poacher always boasts, and always receives
applause.

JIM BILLINGS.

Few people know that large numbers of the splendid seamen who man our
North Sea fishing fleets are arrant Cockneys. In the North-country and
in Scotland the proud natives are accustomed to regard the Cockney as a
being who can only be reckoned as human by very charitable persons. To
hear a Scotch fisherman mention a "Kokenee" is an experience which lets
you know how far scorn may really be cherished by an earnest man. The
Northerners believe that all the manliness and hardiness in the country
reside in their persons; but I take leave to dispute that pleasing
article of faith, for I have seen hundreds of Londoners who were quite
as brave and skilful sailors as any born north of the Tees. The Cockney
is a little given to talking, but he is a good man all the same.

In the smacks many lads from the workhouse schools are apprenticed, and
some of the smartest skippers in England come originally from Mitcham or
Sutton. Jim Billings was a workhouse boy when he first went to sea, and
he sometimes ran up to London after his eight weeks' trips were over.
When I first cast eyes on Jim I said quite involuntarily, "Bob Travers,
by the living man!" The famous coloured boxer is still alive and hearty,
and it would be hard to tell the difference between him and Jim Billings
were it not that the prize-fighter dresses smartly. Jim doesn't; his
huge chest is set off by a coarse white jumper; his corded arms are
usually bared nearly to the elbow, and his vast shock of twining curls
relieves him generally from the trouble of wearing headgear. On Sundays
he sometimes puts on a most comfortless felt hat, but that is merely a
chance tribute to social usage, and the ugly excrescence does not
disfigure Jim's shaggy head for very long. Billings's father was a
mulatto prize-fighter, who perished early from the effects of those
raging excesses in which all men of his class indulged when they came
out of training. The mulatto was as powerful and game a man as ever
stripped in a twenty-four-foot ring; but he ruined his constitution with
alcohol, and he left his children penniless. The little bullet-headed
Jim was drafted off to the workhouse school, and from thence to a small
fishing-smack