of the Judges. But when I tried to pass on to the New
Testament I must confess I met with more difficulties.

"No, no, don't read me that; it's too good for an old rakehelly tar
like me," he persisted in saying. "Them apostles was fishermen, d'ye
see, and the fishermen and longshore folk always was more peaceable
and quieter-like than us deep-sea bilboes. You read me about that
there fellow as slaughtered the Camelites; I understands him better.
By Gosh, he gave 'em a warm time of it, on my swow, didn't he! Not
much use them Camelites showing their heads when Joshua was in the
offing! He swept their decks for 'em, clean, every time."

He meant the Amalekites. I could not quite approve of the spirit in
which he took the sacred history, but still I felt that to get him to
listen to the Scriptures at all was something, and the good seed might
come up later on.

I pleased myself with these efforts to reform my poor old friend, and
yet perhaps I should have been better employed in seeking to amend my
own life. For though I can truly say that I lived honestly and
soberly, yet all this time my heart was given up to thoughts of
ambition and revenge, and the desire of riches; and the good
impressions wrought upon me by my sufferings in the Black Hole had
almost faded clean out of my mind.

I was not present at the taking of Chander Nugger, which was the next
great event in the East Indies, and therefore forbear from describing
it. But this affair served to display yet further the duplicity and
shifting policy of Surajah Dowlah, whose conduct evidently changed
from day to day as the passion of hatred of the English, or fear of
Colonel Clive, obtained the mastery in his bosom. On one day he sent
permission for us to attack the French, on the next he wrote strictly
forbidding it. Colonel Clive would have gone against them without
waiting for the Nabob's leave, but Admiral Watson was more scrupulous,
considering that to do so would be a violation of our recent treaty.
Yet he did not shrink from upbraiding the Nabob in round terms, and
sent him one letter in which he threatened, with the bluntness of a
seaman, to kindle such a fire in his country as all the water in the
Ganges should not be able to extinguish.

Finally the Nabob gave way, induced partly by his fears of the Pitans,
a savage predatory tribe on the borders of Afghanistan, who from time
to time broke into the Great Mogul's dominions, and were now
threatening to ma