84 



THE DOVER ROAD 



strange oaths, and telling of many a hard-fought fight. 

 If he had kindred company, there would be, I promise 

 you, a riotous time ; for no schoolboy so frolicsome as 

 Jack ashore, and hard-won wages and prize-money, got 

 at the cost of blood and wounds, he spent like water. 

 Nothing was too expensive for him, nor, indeed, 

 expensive enough, and if he was sufficiently fortunate to 

 leave his landing-place with any money at all, he would 

 very likely post up to town with the best on the road. 



JACK COME HOME AGAIX. 



holding, very rightly, that life without experiences 

 was not worth the having. And of experiences he 

 had plenty. He lived like a lord so long as his money 

 lasted, and when he went afloat again he was shipped 

 in a lordly state of drunkenness ; but once the anchor 

 was weighed his was a slave's existence. Not that any 

 word of his hardships escaped him ; he took them as 

 inseparable from a seaman's life ; and, indeed, once the 

 first rapture of his home-coming was over, the sea 

 unfailingly claimed him again. And when ashore all 

 his talk was of battles and storms ; he damned 

 Bonaparte, believed that one Englishman could thrash 

 three " darned parley voos," despised land-lubbers, 



