Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/118

 fed by the crimps, who make their market of them in the fall of the year by selling them to the captains; procuring for the men an exorbitant sum for the voyage home, and for themselves a handsome douceur for their trouble, both from the captain and the sailor.

We were desired not to take men out of the merchant vessels, but to search for them in the houses of the crimps. This was to us a source of great amusement and singular adventure; for the ingenuity in concealing them was only equalled by the art and cunning exercised in the discovery of their abodes. Cellars and lofts were stale and out of use: we found more game in the interior of haystacks, church steeples, closets under fire-places where the fire was burning. Some we found headed up in sugar-hogsheads, and some concealed within bundles of hoop-staves. Sometimes we found seamen, dressed as gentlemen, drinking wine and talking with the greatest familiarity with people much above them in rank, who had used these means