“Dickory, dickory, dock; the mouse ran up the clock,” etc.

My father wished her to come and live with him on board the frigate; but to that my mother would not consent, saying that she had, it was true, degraded herself and her family by marrying a coxswain, but she was not going to further contaminate herself by mixing with the vulgar creatures on board.  In this resolve I think my mother was right; but her dismissal and disgrace was followed up by my father being disrated and turned into the maintop, for no other reason in the world than such being the will and pleasure of Lady Hercules.

Her ladyship considered that she had lost a good servant through my father’s intervention; and having therefore taken a dislike to him, did not choose that he should, as coxswain, come up to the house as usual; and, as he no longer did the duty of coxswain, she asserted that he was not entitled to the rating.  Thus, seven months had hardly passed away before my father’s marriage became a source of vexation and annoyance; his pay was decreased, and he was no longer a petty officer.  My mother’s pride was hurt; and if she was resolute in not going on board to remain with him when he was captain’s coxswain, she was still more so now that he was reduced to a common seaman.  As for my father, he was the picture of misery—­he had no consolation except turning his quid and tying his pigtail.

But everything changes in this world, and among other changes was that of the station of the frigate, which was ordered foreign.  Sir Hercules took leave of his lady, who retired to Tunbridge Wells.  My father took leave of my mother, who retired to Woolwich.  She had saved some money in service, and my father handed over to her all the pay which he received, when the ship’s company were paid previous to the sailing of the ship.  It is but justice to observe that the moment he was out of soundings and away from the influence of her ladyship, Sir Hercules reinstated my father, and gave him back his rating as coxswain.  My father was indeed the smartest and best seaman in the ship; he could do his work from stem to stern—­mouse a stay, pudding an anchor, and pass a gammoning, as well as he could work a Turk’s head, cover a manrope, or point a lashing for the cabin table.  Besides which, he had seen service, having fought under Rodney, and served at the siege of Gibraltar.

But I must return to my mother, who, when she first went to Woolwich, which she did in a transport that was ordered round, took lodgings in the outskirts of the town; and not wishing to acknowledge that she had married a common sailor, as she supposed my father still to be, asserted that she was the wife of a captain of a merchant vessel, which had been taken up as a transport to convey troops to the West Indies.  On this supposition, being received into a society above her real station, she was compelled to spend more money than she could afford, and her finances rapidly wasted away.  In the meantime I was born—­a fine baby, but with nothing to look up to but a penniless mother, an absent (if existing) father, the workhouse, and the sky.