“What’s the use of sighing,
While time is on the wing?
Oh! what’s the use of crying?
Then merrily, merrily sing
Fa! la!”
Consequently, as Simon said he knew he would, he began in a short time to look out for another wife; and, unhappily for us, fixed on a widow with a family. She was, however, a very amiable woman; in fact, her great fault was, that she was too amiable, too soft and yielding. She could not manage to rule her own family, and a most uproarious, mutinous set they were. From the time they came to the house there was no peace or quiet for anyone else. They, indeed, soon took to try and rule over us with a high hand. Her girls used to come it over our girls, and her boys over our boys. Brother Simon, who was bigger and stronger than her eldest, more than once threatened that he would thrash them all round, if they had any more nonsense, and that invariably made our poor stepmother burst into tears, and plead so hard for her rebellious offspring, that the good, honest fellow had not the heart to put his threat into execution. At last some of us could stand it no longer. As Simon was old enough, he went one day, without saying anything to anybody, and enlisted in the marines. Bill, our second brother, got our father to apprentice him to a ship-carpenter; and, after no little trouble and coaxing, he promised to let me go on board a man-of-war. He did so, however, very unwillingly.
“You don’t know the sort of life that you will have to lead aboard ship, Jack,” he observed. “Boys afloat are not the happy-go-lucky sort of chaps they seem on shore, let me tell you; but, to be sure, they have got discipline there, which is more than I can say there is to be found in a certain place that you know of.” And my father uttered a deep sigh.
We were walking, one evening after tea, up and down our bit of a garden, while he smoked his pipe. He was allowed to live out of barracks, and we had a small cottage a little way off.
“I don’t know, Jack, but what I should not be sorry, if my company was ordered on service afloat,” he observed, confidentially, after a minute’s silence. “Your new mother is a good woman—a very good woman; about her I made no mistake, though she is not equal, by a long chalk, to her that’s gone; but oh! Jack,” and he sighed again, “I did not take into account those young cubs of hers. They will not rest till they have driven your sisters out of the house, as they have driven the boys; and then—and then—why, I suppose, they will drive me away too!”
My poor father! I sighed at the thoughts of his domestic happiness being so completely destroyed, in consequence of the advice of King Solomon not having been followed—the rod having been spared, and the children spoiled.
The following day, my father being sent on duty to Portsea, took me with him. Soon after we landed, I met, just on the inner end of the Common Hard, an old friend of mine, Dick Lee, a waterman.
“Father,” I said, “if Dick will let me, I’ll stop, and have a pull in his wherry. As I am going to sea, I should like to learn to row better than I now do.”
My father, glad to keep me out of harm’s way, told me that, if Dick wished it, I might remain with him. Well pleased, I ran down the Hard, and jumped into old Dick’s wherry. Dick intended that I should sit in his boat, and just practise with the oars, but I had no notion of that sort; so, casting off the painter, I shoved away from the shore. I kept pulling up and down for some time, and round and round, till my arms ached; when, determining to take a longer voyage, I turned the boat’s head out into the harbour. The tide was running out: I went on very swimmingly, I did not think of that. I had not, however, got very far, when I heard old Dick’s voice shouting to me—
“Come back, Jack, come back, you young jackanapes!”