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—­

[Illustration:  THE REAL BLACK REVIVER.]

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:”—­

  Oakum to me[3], ye sailors bold,
    Wot plows upon the sea;
  To you I mean for to unfold
    My mournful histo-ree. 
  So pay attention to my song,
    And quick-el-ly shall appear,
  How innocently, all along,
    I vos in-weigle-ed here.