As the ship had been only two or three days in commission, few seamen had as yet entered; but shortly afterwards they came on board in sufficient numbers; and I have sometimes ascribed the facility with which we got the ship manned, not a little to the attractive agency of the diverting vagabond, recently come from town, the fame of whose tricks soon extended over Portsea; such as catching hold of the end of the sail-maker's ball of twine, and paying the whole overboard, hand over hand, from a secure station in the rigging; or stealing the boatswain's silver call, and letting it drop from the end of the cat-head; or his getting into one of the cabin ports and tearing up the captain's letters, a trick at which even the stately skipper can only laugh.
One of our monkey's grand amusements was to watch some one arranging his clothes bag.

After the stowage was completed, and everything put carefully away, he would steal round, untie the strings, and having opened the mouth of the bag draw forth in succession every article of dress, first smell it, then turn it over and over, and lastly fling it away on the wet deck.

It was amusing enough to observe, that all the while he was committing any piece of mischief he appeared not only to be under the fullest consciousness of guilt, but living in the perfect certainty that he was earning a good sound drubbing for his pains.
Still the pleasure of doing wrong was so strong and habitual within him, that he seemed utterly incapable of resisting the temptation.
While thus occupied, and alternately chattering with terror, and screaming with delight, till the enraged owner of the property burst in upon him, hardly more angry with Jacko than with his malicious messmates, who, instead of preventing, had rather encouraged the pillage.
All this was innocent, however, compared to the tricks which the blue-jackets taught him to play upon the jolly marines.

How they set about this laudable piece of instruction, I know not; but the antipathy which they established in Jacko's breast against the red coats was something far beyond ordinary prejudice, and in its consequences partook more of the interminable war between cat and dog.
At first he merely chattered, or grinned contemptuously at them; or, at worst, snapped at their heels, soiled their fine pipe-clayed trousers, or pulled the cartridges out of their cartouch-boxes, and scattered the powder over the decks; feats for which his rump was sure to smart under the ratan of the indignant sergeant, to whom the "party" made their complaint.

Upon these occasions the sailors laughed so heartily at their friend Jacko, as he placed his hands behind him, and, in an agony of rage and pain, rubbed the seat of honour tingling under the sergeant's chastisement, that if he could only have reasoned the matter, he would soon have distrusted this offensive but not defensive alliance with the Johnnies against the Jollies.