"What's the matter, Billy?" I asked. "'Tis the very thing I have been wanting this long time."
"I know it is, master," says he, "but what I don't know is why I was such a silly ass as to sweat myself a-carrying of it, when I might have rolled it on its edge."
"Well, you won't do it again," I said, smiling at his woebegone look.
"No, I take my davy I won't," says he.
"What is 'davy'?" I asked, never having heard that expression before.
"Why, don't you know that?" says he, opening his eyes very wide.
"No. What is it?" I said.
Then he scratched his head, and looked at the ground, and after a great deal of consideration says: "Well, master, I can't say, not to be certain, what a davy is; but suppose I said to you, 'I eat forty cocoa-nuts at a go,' and you said to me, 'You're a liar,' and I said, 'I take my davy on it,' you'd have to believe me or else fetch me a crack on the nob: at least, that's what they do Limehouse way."
This may seem a very trifling matter, and not worthy of setting down in a serious history; but I quote the words to show that we did not pass the days without discourse, from which indeed I for my part got much entertainment.