and legitimate modes of clearing out his lockers; but even these means are sometimes found inadequate to effect the desired object with sufficient rapidity.  When there happens to be a number of brother-tars similarly employed, who have engaged all the coaches, fiddlers, and sweethearts in the town, it is then that Jack is put to his wits’-end; and it is only by buying cocked-hats and top-boots for the boat’s-crew, or some such absurdity, that he can get all his cash scattered before he is obliged to return on board.  This is a picture of a sailor ashore, but a sailor aground is a different being altogether.  An unlucky shot may deprive him of a leg or arm; he may be frost-nipped at the pole, or get a coup de soleil in the tropics, and then be turned upon the world to shape his course amongst its rocks and shallows, with the bitter blast of poverty in his teeth.  But Jack is not to be beaten so easily; although run aground, he refuses to strike his flag, and, with a cheerful heart, goes forth into the highways and byeways to sing “the dangers of the sea,” and, to collect from the pitying passers-by, the coppers that drop, “like angel visits,” into his little oil-skin hat.

These nautical melodists, with voices as rough as their beards, are to be met with everywhere; but they abound chiefly in the neighbourhood of Deptford and Wapping, where they seem to be indigenous.  The most remarkable specimen of the class may, however, frequently be seen about the streets of London, carrying at his back a good-sized box, inside which, and peeping through a sort of port-hole, a pretty little girl of some two years old exhibits her chubby face.  Surmounting the box, a small model of a frigate, all a-tant and ship-shape, represents “Her Majesty’s (God bless her!) frigate Billy-ruffian, on board o’ which the exhibitor lost his blessed limb.”

Jack—­we call him Jack, though we confess we are uncertain of his baptismal appellation—­because Jack is a sort of generic name for his species—­Jack prides himself on his little Poll and his little ship, which he boasts are the miniature counterparts of their lovely originals; and with these at his back, trudges merrily along, trusting that Providence will help him to “keep a southerly wind out of the bread-bag.”  Jack’s songs, as we have remarked, all relate to the sea—­he is a complete repository of Dibdin’s choice old ballads and fok’sl chaunts.  “Tom Bowling,” “Lovely Nan,” “Poor Jack,” and “Lash’d to the helm,” with “Cease, rude Boreas,” and “Rule Britannia,” are amongst his favourite pieces, but the “Bay of Biscay” is his crack performance:  with this he always commenced, when he wanted to enlist the sympathies of his auditors,—­mingling with the song sundry interlocutory notes and comments.

Having chosen a quiet street, where the appearance of mothers with blessed babbies in the windows prognosticates a plentiful descent of coppers, Jack commences by pitching his voice uncommonly strong, and tossing Poll and the Billy-ruffian from side to side, to give an idea of the way Neptune sarves the navy,—­strikes, as one may say, into deep water, by plunging into “The Bay of Biscay,” in the following manner;—­