“Sea life bean’t for the likes of you,” he said.  “I don’t know nothing about lawyers, saving them as they call sea lawyers, and they’re rogues; but you’d better be a land lawyer than go to sea.  ’Tis all very well for them as begin as officers, but for the men the life bean’t fit for a dog.  Aboard ship you’d meet some very rough company—­very rough indeed.  I don’t pretend to be better nor most, but there be some terrible bad ones at sea.  Of course it depends mostly on the skipper, but even where the skipper’s a good ’un—­and there be good and bad—­he can’t have his eyes everywhere, and I’ve knowed youngsters so bad used on board that they’d sooner ha’ bin dead.  Not but what you mightn’t stand a chance, being a big fellow of your inches.”

What the old fellow said did not in the least shake my resolution.  The only effect of it was to turn my inclination rather in favor of the merchant service than the king’s navy, to which I had inclined hitherto.  In a king’s ship I might certainly share in some fighting, which has ever great attractions to a healthy boy; but then I should have little chance of seeing the world unless specially favored by circumstances, for the ship might be kept cruising about, looking for the French who never came.  Whereas in a merchant ship I might see India, and even China, and my new friend told me fine stories of the fortunes to be made in those distant parts by the lucky ones, besides which I felt a longing to see strange and far-off lands and peoples for the mere pleasure of it.  To take service with an East Indiaman most hit my fancy, and when the sailor told me that London and Southampton were the ports for the East India trade, I began to think of working my passage to one or the other of them.

John Woodrow, as he was named, advised me not to be in a hurry, and when I explained that my little stock of money would be exhausted in a few days by the charges at the inn where I had put up, he recommended me to a widow living towards Clifton, who would give me board and lodging for a more modest sum.  My anxieties on this score being removed, I resolved to follow Woodrow’s advice, and not be in too great haste to take my first plunge.  He promised to let me know of any decent skipper who might be sailing to Southampton or London if, when I had had a few days to think things over, my mind remained the same.

Next day a great king’s ship of three decks came into the river, and I passed the whole morning in gazing at her, watching what went on upon her deck, and the boatloads of mariners that came ashore from her, envying the officers, and wavering in my design to join a merchant vessel.  The vessel was named, as I found, the Sans Pareil, and though I had little French (the dead tongues being most thought of at Shrewsbury), I knew the words meant “the matchless,” and certainly she outdid all the other ships around her.