old Captain Goss! We would be staggering under a whole main-sail, when
the other smacks had three reefs in theirs; and it was odds but we had
one line of reef-points triced up, when our neighbours would be going
at it under storm-trysail and storm-jib. He worked the _Lively Nan_
hard, he did, did Captain Goss. Sweet, and wholesome, and easy as she
was--for she would rise to any sea, like as comfortable as a duck--Old
Goss all but drove her under. Dry jackets were scarce on board the
_Lively Nan_. If there was as much wind stirring as would whirl round
the rusty old vane on the topmast head, 'Carry on, carry on!' was
always the captain's cry; and away we would bowl, half-a-dozen of the
lee-streaks of the deck under water.

Well, mates, Old Goss was a prime sailor; but he was a strange sort of
man. To see him in a passion, was something you wouldn't forget in a
hurry; and you wouldn't have known him long without having the chance.
Most of us can swear a bit now and then; but you ought to have heard
Captain Goss! He used even to frighten the old salts, that had common
oaths in their mouths from morning till night. He was worse than the
worst madman in Bedlam when his blood was up; and even the strong,
bold men of the crew used to cower before him like as the cabin-boy.
And yet, mates, he was but a little, maimed man, and more than sixty
years old. He had a regular monkey-face; I never saw one like
it--brown, and all over puckers, and working and twitching, like the
sea where the tide-currents meet. He had but one eye, and he wore a
big black patch over the place where the other had been; but that one
eye, mates, would screw into you like a gimlet. Well, Captain Goss was
more than fifty when he came down to Barking, and bought the _Lively
Nan_, and made a carrier[1] of her; and nobody knew who he was, or
where he came from. There was an old house at Barking then, and I have
heard say that its ruins are there yet. The boys said that Guy