been sent for by mistake, and who was ordered to quit the cabin immediately; and there was I, expecting to be put in irons, and have seven dozen for my breakfast.  As for Sir Hercules, he didn’t know what to do; he did nothing but storm at everybody, for my lady, with her head under the clothes, was serving him out at no small rate.  She wouldn’t, she declared, allow any man to come into the cabin to hoist her up again.  So indecent, so indelicate, so shocking—­she was ashamed of Sir Hercules—­to send for the men; if they didn’t leave the cabin immediately, she’d scream and she’d faint—­that she would—­there was no saying what she wouldn’t do!  Well, there we waited just outside until at last Sir Hercules and my lady came to a parley.  She was too sick to get out of bed, and he was not able to hoist her up without assistance; so being, as I suppose, pretty well tired of lying with her head three feet lower than her heels, she consented, provided that she was properly kivered up, to allow us to come in and put all to rights.  Well, first she made Sir Hercules throw over her his two boat cloaks, but that wouldn’t do; so he threw the green cloth from off the table, but that warn’t enough for her delicate sensibility, and she hollowed from under the clothes for more kivering; so Sir Hercules sent for two of the ship’s ensigns, and coiled away the bunting on her till it was as high as a haycock, and then we were permitted to come in and hoist her ladyship up again to the battens.  Fortunately it was not a slippery hitch that had let her down by the run, but the lanyard had given way from my lady’s own weight, so my back was not scratched after all.  Women ain’t no good on board, Jack, that’s sartain.”

But I must now introduce a more important personage than even Lady Hercules, which is my mother.  They say “like master, like man,” and I may add, “like lady, like maid.”  Lady Hercules was fine, but her maid was still finer.  Most people when they write their biography, if their parents were poor, inform you that they left them a good name and nothing else.  Some parents cannot even do that; but all parents can at all events leave their children a pretty name, by taking a little trouble at their baptism.  My mother’s name was Araminta, which, as my father truly observed, was “a touch above the common.”  She had originally gone into service as a nursery maid, living in her first situation one year and nine months; in her second she remained two years and four months; then she left to better herself, and obtained the situation of nurse in a family where she remained two years and one month; after which Lady Hercules then having a child of a year old, she was received into her service.  At three years old the child died, and my mother was promoted to the situation of lady’s maid.  This advancement quite spoiled her; she was prouder than her mistress, and gave herself ten times more airs, and when, at first, my father (who as coxswain was constantly up at the