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 Pretty-bones, and worked my way aft, like a man. I was six months aboard a Garnsey lugger, hauling in the slack of the lee-sheet, and coiling up rigging. From that I went a few trips in a fore-and-after, in the same trade, which after all, was but a blind kind of sailing in the dark, where a man larns but little, excepting how to steer by the stars. Well! then, d'ye see, I larnt how a topmast should be slushed, and how a top gallant-sail was to be becketted; and then I did small jobs in the cabin, such as mixing the skipper's grog. 'Twas there I got my taste, which you must have often seen, is excellent. Well, here's better acquaintance to us."

Remarkable nodded a return to the compliment, and took a sip of the beverage before her; for, provided it was well sweetened, she had no objection to a small potation now and then. After this observance of courtesy between the worthy couple, the dialogue proceeded as follows:

"You have had great experunces in your life, Benjamin; for, as the scripter says, 'they that go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord.'"

"Ay! for that matter, they in brigs and schooners too; and it mought say the works of the devil. The sea. Mistress Remarkable, is a great advantage to a man, in the way of knowledge, for he sees the fashions of nations, and the shape of a country. Now, I suppose, for myself here, who is but an unlarned man to some that follows the seas, I suppose that, taking the coast from Cape Ler-Hogue as low down as Cape Finish-there, there isn't so much as a head land, or an island, that I don't know either the name of it, or some thing more or less about it. Take enough, woman, to colour the water. Here's sugar. It's a sweet tooth, that fellow that you hold on upon