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Rh "; it had "become a ragged regiment of common rogues." Aboard the Lion's Whelp they were mostly old rovers who had sailed in the piratical raids of the last reign. The work they had to do while they lay in Portsmouth was not enough to keep them employed; and "when sailors are idle you have mutiny." Besides too much spare time, they had too many causes for complaint. The ship's beer was sour; the ship had an unwholesome smell; the beef and fish were putrid; the pay was both irregular and insufficient. In the evenings, when work was at an end, the ship-keepers would get together; and Ward would hold forth to them upon the evils of their lot. He told them of the happy days they had enjoyed together in the past, in the West Indies or elsewhere, when the world had been an oyster to them, which, with their jack-knives, they had opened. The sailors listened to him, and held his words to be sound doctrine; but, as they saw no remedy, they contented themselves with listening.

It happened that Ward somehow came to hear of a recusant, a Roman Catholic gentleman, who was preparing to leave England for France, in