victim. He will smile pleasantly, and press his hand kindly, as he invites him to have a rubber, but he will eye him as a vulture does a lamb. Surrounded by a number of them, I have more than once congratulated myself on being a winner, when, lo! the cash was suddenly swept off the table, and half a dozen eager voices declared that I had lost. Indignant remonstrances and protestations were in vain.
'When I had lost every penny at the gaming-table, for the first time I determined to try my fortune in a foreign land, and took a passage to Lisbon. But here my evil genius pursued me, and I was arrested by the orders of General Trant, and sent back to England, for no crime in the world but reporting to the British Consul the assassination of Mr. Perceval by Bellingham, in the lobby of the House of Commons. I returned to Lisbon, gave way to my newly-acquired propensity for gambling, and again found myself without a farthing. I sold the clothes off my back, and putting on an old jacket and trousers (I could not well do with less) engaged as a seaman in a gunboat, and cruised off St. Vincent for ten days. We took a good many small prizes, sent out on purpose to be taken, furnished with false papers. Here I was promoted to the command of a watch, on account of the ready way in which I performed my duty; but my elevation immediately drew down such a storm of jealousy and dislike from the rest of the officers that I was made quite miserable. Going, however, into Gibraltar, I was lucky enough to be sent to the hospital, through representing an old complaint that sometimes troubled me to be ten times worse than it really was. Soon after I was sent to Portsmouth, and put on board the Gladiator, fifty guns, where from seven to eight hundred sick men were crowded together in a state of positive suffocation. Here I became really ill, and wrote a letter to the Admiral, craving permission to go on shore. When the doctor and captain
