That's what I said _then_,--but now I think, what a cussed fool I was. All my eye-flown bubbles were fated to be busted and melted, like the _wigs_, "into thin _hair_."
_Nong port!_ We gets wiser as we gets * *
Genteel Reader,--I beg your parding. I'm better now. Bless me, how the ship waggles! It's reelly hawful; the sailors only laff at it, but I suppose as they're all _tars_ they don't mind being _pitched_ a little.
The capting tells me we are now reglarly at see, having just passt the North 4 land; so, ackording to custom, I begin my journal, or, as naughtical men call it--to keep my log.
_12 o'clock._--Wind.--All in my eye. Mate said we had our larburd tax aboard--never herd of that tax on shore. Told me I should learn to box the compass--tried, but couldn't do it--so boxt the cabbing boy insted. Capting several times calld to a man who was steering--"_Port, port_;" but though he always anserd, "Eye, eye, sir," he didn't bring him a drop. The black cook fell into the hold on the topp of his hed. Everybody sed he was gone to Davy Jones's locker; but he warn't, for he soon came to again, drank 1/2 a pint of rumm, and declared it was--
Saw a yung salor sitting on the top of one of the masts--thort of Dibdings faymos see-song, and asked if he warn't
"The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft?"
Man laff'd, and said it wor only Bill Junk clearing the pennant halliards.
_1 o'clock._--Thort formerly that every sailer wore his pigtale at the back of his head, like Mr. Tippy Cook--find I labored under a groce mistake--they all carry their pigtale in their backy-boxes. When I beheld the sailors working and heaving, and found that I was also beginning to heave-too, I cuddn't help repeting the varse of the old song--which fitted my case egsactly:--
"There's the capt'n he is our kimmander, There's the bos'n and all the ship's crew, There's the married men as well as the single, Ken-ows what we poor sailors goes through."
However, I made up my mind not to look inward on my own wose any longer, so I put my head out of a hole in the side of the ship--and, my wiskers! how she did whizz along. Saw the white cliffs of Halbion a long way off, wich brought tiers in my i, thinking of those I had left behind, particular Sally Martin the young gal I was paying my attentions to, who gave me a _lock_ of her air when I was a leaving of the _key_. Oh! Lord Melbun, Lord Melbun! how can you rest in youre 4-post bed at nite, nowing you have broke the tize of affexion and divided 2 fond arts for hever! This mellancholly reflexion threw me into a poeticle fitte, and though I was werry uneasy in my _stommik_, and had nothing to rite on but my _chest_. I threw off as follows in a few 2nds, and arterards sung it to the well-none hair of "Willy Reilly:"--