As I left the house she said I was a cruel old thing, and not a bit
nice, and she hoped I never, never _would_ come back. So I shipped as
mate on the _Mudlark_, bound from London to wherever the captain might
think it expedient to sail. It had not been thought advisable to hamper
Captain Abersouth with orders, for when he could not have his own way,
it had been observed, he would contrive in some ingenious way to make
the voyage unprofitable. The owners of the _Mudlark_ had grown wise in
their generation, and now let him do pretty much as he pleased, carrying
such cargoes as he fancied to ports where the nicest women were. On the
voyage of which I write he had taken no cargo at all; he said it would
only make the _Mudlark_ heavy and slow. To hear this mariner talk one
would have supposed he did not know very much about commerce.

We had a few passengers--not nearly so many as we had laid in basins and
stewards for; for before coming off to the ship most of those who had
bought tickets would inquire whither she was bound, and when not
informed would go back to their hotels and send a bandit on board to
remove their baggage. But there were enough left to be rather
troublesome. They cultivated the rolling gait peculiar to sailors when
drunk, and the upper deck was hardly wide enough for them to go from the
forecastle to the binnacle to set their watches by the ship's compass.
They were always petitioning Captain Abersouth to let the big anchor go,
just to hear it plunge in the water, threatening in case of refusal to
write to the newspapers. A favorite amusement with them was to sit in
the lee of the bulwarks, relating their experiences in former
voyages--voyages distinguished in every instance by two remarkable
features, the frequency of unprecedented hurricanes and the entire
immunity of the narrator from seasickness. It was very interesting to
see them sitting in a row telling these things, each man with a basin
between his legs.