EXTRACTS FROM A LANDSMAN's LOG. 251 



account the watch gave me, and I believed it ; until 

 three months after, I was in the same vessel, we fell 

 in with an Irish hooker, and one of her people with 

 my grego on : they all declared it that it had been 

 given them by the crew of another such brig as our's, 

 which they boarded one night, in exchange for 

 whiskey." 



II.— THE DISTRESSED SUBJECT. 



British adventurers beyond seas, on stating the 

 necessities of their case, to our consul in any foreign 

 port, may procure themselves a passage in the first 

 homeward bound vessel as distressed subjects. One 

 of these unfortunates who had been received on board 

 the brig at her last port, died yesterday evening. 

 He appeared to be quite a youth, and in the last 

 stage of decline, but having exhibited much reserve 

 on the subject of his story, we only knew him as a 

 Londoner, who had served in the Columbian marine, 

 where he confessed his having been harshly treated, 

 and finally turned on shore at Fredrickstadt in his 

 present condition. The poor lad expired during the 

 first watch, and just before midnight the Commander 

 sent to intimate a wish that I would read the funeral 

 service over him ; accordingly I came on deck, and 

 found the body already there, sewed up in a ham- 

 mock, as usual, with shot attached to the feet in 

 order to sink it. The brig was pitching heavily, 

 being on a wind with three reefs in the top-sail, and 

 throwing up whole sheets of foam over the weather 

 bow; they had taken the main-sail off her, but she 

 yet heeled so much that every passing wave gurgled 

 in under the corpse, as if impatient of its deposit. 

 This lay on a grating within the port next before the 

 larboard gangway, and whence its usual occupant, 

 an eighteen pound cannonade, had been withdrawn 

 for the occasion. The people held on, some by the 

 lashings of the long boat, whence two or three sheep 

 were gazing on the dumb show beneath ; some along 



