Little undersized chaps, they are all chatter and jabber, and when they used to come alongside to unload, it were jest for all the world like so many boatfuls of monkeys.
"Well, I starts for my third voyage, being by this time about sixteen or seventeen.

We got out to Rio right enough; but we couldn't get a full cargo back, and the captain determined to cruise among the West Indy Islands and fill up his ship.

We were pretty nigh full when one morning the lookout hailed that there were two vessels just coming out of an inlet in an island we were passing some three miles on the weather bow.
"The captain was soon on deck with his glass, and no sooner did he make them out than he gave orders to clap every sail on her.

We hadn't a very smart crew, but there are not many British ships ever made sail faster than we did then.

The men just flew about, for it needed no glass to show that the two vessels which came creeping out from among trees weren't customers as one wanted to talk to on the high seas.