SIR SAMP. Dick--body o' me--Dick has been dead these two years. I
writ you word when you were at Leghorn.

BEN. Mess, that's true; marry! I had forgot. Dick's dead, as you
say. Well, and how? I have a many questions to ask you. Well, you
ben't married again, father, be you?

SIR SAMP. No; I intend you shall marry, Ben; I would not marry for
thy sake.

BEN. Nay, what does that signify? An' you marry again--why then,
I'll go to sea again, so there's one for t'other, an' that be all.
Pray don't let me be your hindrance--e'en marry a God's name, an the
wind sit that way. As for my part, mayhap I have no mind to marry.

FRAIL. That would be pity--such a handsome young gentleman.

BEN. Handsome! he, he, he! nay, forsooth, an you be for joking,
I'll joke with you, for I love my jest, an' the ship were sinking,
as we sayn at sea. But I'll tell you why I don't much stand towards
matrimony. I love to roam about from port to port, and from land to
land; I could never abide to be port-bound, as we call it. Now, a
man that is married has, as it were, d'ye see, his feet in the
bilboes, and mayhap mayn't get them out again when he would.

SIR SAMP. Ben's a wag.

BEN. A man that is married, d'ye see, is no more like another man
than a galley-slave is like one of us free sailors; he is chained to
an oar all his life, and mayhap forced to tug a leaky vessel into