in g ; and, being single men, dignified their
abode with the appellation of “ Bachelors’
Hall.” After a few years, Taylor’s companion
got tired of the solitude and sameness
of the scene, and went off in a ship that
touched here. His comrade, at the time I
became a member of this society, was a
dapper little fellow, as Taylor used to say,
“ half sailor, half waterman, and half fisherman
; born at Wapping, served his time in a
Billingsgate boat, and occasionally vended
sprats 5 ” whilst, as a proof he was no pretender,
he sometimes delighted us by going
over the whole of those melodies which the
fishwomen of the' streets of London make
familiar to one’s ear. The name of this
worthy was Richard; but he was always
called Old Dick. He prided himself on being
“ a man-of-war’s man,” having, at the close
of the war, entered the service, and was on
board a ten gun brig ; but every attempt he
made at a nautical yarn was always instantly
put a stop to by old Taylor, with such
epithets of contempt that he was obliged to
desist; but his local knowledge of Deptford,
Bugsby’s Hole, the Pool, &c. was truly extraordinary,
and was his strong hold, from
which his old hickory-faced companion never
could dislodge him. But Dick had another
equally strong position, which formed a part
of his history quite incomprehensible to his
companions, and which he usually resorted
to when driven from the field in attempting
to relate his adventures while in the Royal
Navy; and that was, his having actually
served as a dragoon in the army of Buenos
Ayres: but here Glass always “ came athwart
his hawse; ” and the contempt he had for his
dragoonship was equally as strong as that of
Taylor for his seamanship. However, Dick
described an army such as Glass could form
no idea of; the half-naked, wild warrior of
South America being so totally a different
kind of soldier to what he had been accustomed
to see. Poor Dick’s story was a true
and a melancholy one. By one of those sudden
acts of treachery and cruelty which have
been so common on the coast of South America,
the vessel to which he belonged, while
quietly engaged in picking up seal on the