ny greater matters. Mr. Sloper,
on his return to Labour's Retreat, and when he was somewhat recovered
in nerves and health, sued Joe Westlake in the Whitechapel County
Court, in action of tort, laying his damages at the moderate sum of
fifty pounds. Mr. G.E. Williams, for the defendant, contended that the
plaintiff deserved the treatment which he had brought on himself, and
the Judge, after hearing the evidence, said that although the
plaintiff, Sloper, had acted most improperly in loading his guns, the
defendant, Westlake, had retaliated too severely, but, under the
circumstances, he should award only five pounds' damages, without
costs.

_Cornered_!

"I don't see no signs of the tug, do you, Tom?" said the old skipper,
John Bunk, rolling up to me from the companion hatchway. He was fresh
from the cabin, and was rather tipsy, with a fixed stare and a stately
manner, though his legs would have framed the lower part of an egg.
His hat was tall, and brushed the wrong way. He wore a thick shawl
round his neck and was wrapped up in a long monkey-jacket, albeit we
were in the dog-days. In a word, Bunk was a skipper of a type that is
fast perishing off our home waters.

"No," said I, "there's no sign of the tug."

"Then bloomed," said he, "if I don't work her up myself. Who's afraid?
I know the ropes. Get amidships in the fair-way and keep all on, and
there y' are. And mubbe the tug'll pick us up as we go."

"It's all one to Tom," said I.

Our brig was the _Venus_, of Rye, a stump topgallantmast coaster,
eighty years old. We were in a big bight of the coast, heading for a
river which flows past a well known town, whither we were bound. The
bed of that river went in a vein through about three miles of mud,
till it sheared into the land, and flowed into a proper-looking river
with banks of its own. At flood the water covered the mud, but the
river was buoyed, and when once you had the land on either hand and
the bay of mud astern, the pilotage to the town was no more than a
matter of bracing the yards about till you floated into one long reach
whose extremity was painted by the red wharf you moored alongside of.

We were six of a ship's company. John Bunk was skipper, I, Tom Fish,
was the mate, the others were Bill Martin, Jack Stevens, a man named
Rooney, and a boy called William. On board craft of this sort there is
very little discipline, and the sailor's talk to the captain as th