366. The Greenwich Pensioner. [Oor, 
mendous shark that used to be the terror of the harbour of St, Thomas's, 
Upon this shark, and the piece of the mainmast of the Victory, is our 
pensioner content to rest all his importance during his life, and his 
fame with posterity. He will tell you that he, being caterer of the 
mess, let fall a piece of beef out at the port-hole, which this terrible 
shark received into its jaws, and twisted its body most provokingly at 
the delicious mouthful. Hereupon our pensioner,—it was before, he 
reminds you, he had lost a limb—asks leave of the first-lieutenant (for 
the captain was ashore) to have a bout with the shark: leave being 
granted, all the crew are quickly in the shrouds, and upon the hammock- 
netting, to see Tom— tackle the shark.” Our pensioner now enters 
into a minute detail of how, having armed himself with a long knife, he 
jumped overboard, dived under the shark, whom he saw approaching 
with distended jaws, and inflicted a tremendous wound with the knife in 
the belly of the fish; this is repeated thrice, when the shark turns 
itself upon its back—a boat is let down, and both the conqueror and the 
conquered are quickly received upon deck. You are doubtless as- 
tonished at this; he, however, adds to your surprise by telling you 
that the mess regaled off the piece of beef recovered from the fish ; 
be more astounded at this, although mingle no doubt in your astonish- 
ment, and he will straightway promise some day to treat your eyes with 
a sight of a set of chequer-men, cut from the very dorsal bone of the 
immolated shark! To be the hearer of a sailor's tale, is something 
like undergoing the ancient ordeal of red-hot ploughshares ; be innocent 
of unbelief, and you may, as was held, journey in safety ; doubt the 
smallest point, and you are quickly withered into nought. 
. What an odd contrast to his early life is the state of a Greenwich, 
pensioner! It is as though a part of the angry and foaming sea should 
lie stagnant in a bathing-tub. All his business is to recount his former 
adventures—to plod about, and look with a disdainful eye at trees, and 
brick and mortar ; or, when he would indulge in a serious fit of spleen, 
to walk down to the river’s side, and let his gall feed upon the mishaps 
of London apprentices, who, fearless of consequences, may have ventured 
some five miles from home in noé a “ trim-built wherry.” A Greenwich 
pensioner fresh from sea is a most preposterous creature ; he gets up 
every morning for a week, a month, and still finds himself in the same 
place; he knows not what to make of it—he feels the strangeness of his 
situation,, and. would, had he the patience and the wit, liken himself to 
a hundred unsettled things. Compare him to a hippopotamus in a 
gentleman’s park, and he would tell you, he had in his day seen. a 
hippopotamus, and then, with a good-natured grunt, acquiesce in the 
resemblance: or to a jolly-boat in a-flower-garden ; or to a sea-gull in 
the cage of a canary ; or to a porpoise upon a hearth-rug ; or to a boat- 
swain’s-whistle in a nursery ; or to a marling-spike in a milliner’s work- 
room ; or a tar-barrel in a confectioner’s ; with any one or all of these 
misplaced articles would our unsettled pensioner sympathize, until time 
shall have reconciled him to his asylum; and even then, his fancy, like 
the shells upon our mantel-piece, will sound of the distant and the 
dangerous ocean. At Greenwich, however, the mutilated old sailor has 
time enough to indulge in the recollection of his early days, and, with 
what wisdom he may, to make up his mind to meet in another world 
those whom his arm may have sent thither long before. Death, at 
length, gently lays the veteran upon his back—his last words, as the 
a ee 
