;yACK IN A CHURCl!. 2o 



Joe, already loaded ar.d primed, sent a whole broadside slap aboard the 

 others. Even now there was four to two— but, Lord ! Joe's metal was 

 fifty times as heavy as his 'tagonists ; and his guns was so well sarved, 

 that their fire gradually fell oft' to nothing. By and by, they all begm- 

 ned to sheer ofl', wonderfullv disabled in their upper nggmg ; and when 

 the smoke had a little cleared awav, I hailed Joe, and Joe hailed me, and 

 we beginned to grow wondrous thick. He singed out for biscuit and 

 cheese, and I for porter, and we soon got as comfortable as a couple o 

 kings,andknow'd each other's history, from the time we shoved off our keels 

 into the ocean of sarvice, to the moment he steered down to my assist- 

 ance. A generous feller was Joe indeed ! for when ' to pay ' was the 

 word, and the landlord shoved in his warrant, while I was rummaging 

 for small shot, he tossed a handful o' coppers into his starboard fin, and 

 told him to bear oft', and say nothing to nobody. But, howsomever, I 

 was even with Master Joe another time,— but never mind about that. 

 Well, you must know, mv lads, that Joe wasn't going to stay at Falmouth 

 only a verv little time, for his skipper had only put in there for a day 

 or two, and was bound for Portsmouth harbour. The day a'ter this, Joe 

 and I shaked hands, and steered dift'erent courses— he went aboard his 

 craft, and I cut off for Sheerness ; and I didn't hear on him for some 

 time a'ter. But blow me !— if I havn't forgotton to tell ye that he had 

 been married for a couple o' years, and his partner— a wcU-rigged young 

 'oman, so he said, fond of new clothes in her mainsail, and of mighty gen- 

 teel behaviour,— he had her from a 'spectable stock : for her father kept 

 a wholesale crockery shop, and her mother had been cook-maid to an 

 admiral's ladv :— none o' ver flaunty, fly-away, bunting-decked, ginger- 

 bread, tittering voung lasses, but an orderly tort sailing-craft, that 

 never' runned with loose rigging, but had al'ays her spars scrup'lously 

 squared, and her cordage neatly rattled down ; al'ays answering her helm, 

 and turning lightly to wind'ard, and 7iever missing her stmjs. _ She lived 

 in Bortsmo'iith, and, in course, Joe was in a main hurry to join company 

 whilst he staved in port. 



" Well, what's to come, I had from a very 'edible witness, and when I 

 sawed Joe a'terwarns, and axed him about it, he fully bored out the 

 other's testy money, and confessed that no long bow had been drawed in 

 tlie bus'ness. The next day a'ter Joe got ashore happened to be Sun- 

 dav, and as his consart was very 'ligious, nothing would do, but he 

 and she should go to church. Joe hadn't been to no church for a num- 

 ber o'years, and stiived hard to be excused the sarvice. But this only 

 made ' the young 'oman ten times more dissolute ; an, at last, Joe was 

 reasoned down into the vovage, and made to ship his holiday toggery. 

 Afore they got aboard the praying-place, his missus thinked fit to give 

 hirn a little destruction in the way he should behave himself, and amongst 

 the rest, savs she to him, savs she, ' Joe' says she, ' mind you musn't 

 say nothing to nobodv, till the business is all over, and then only in a 

 whisper.' ' Very well,' says Joe, ' I won't.' ' You musn't,' says she, ' keep 

 rolling your eyes about the deck ; and when the people gets up, and sits 

 down, mind you gets up, and sits down too.' 'Ay, ay,' says Joe; 'I 

 won't sit down at all, and then I can't fail o' being right.' ' Well,' says 

 she, • that'll be better than keeping vour seat all the time,' says she, ' and 

 with a little rcg'lation from me, you'll do in that rcsjiect tol'ruble well, 



