"And you?" asked Decker of his man.

He was first an actor, and probably only a strolling one; for Decker in his Satyromastix, a play published in 1602, and designed as a reply to Johnson's Poetaster, 'reproaches him with having left the occupation of a mortar trader to turn actor, and with having put up a supplication to be a poor journeyman player, in which he would have continued, but that he could not set a good face upon it, and so was cashiered.

There was a long brass cannon in the forecastle, with carronades above and below, for she was a double-decker with a row of guns above and below, and at that time such a formidable craft was able to destroy half of the English navy.

(In Cosmopolitan magazine, June 1923) © 10May23, B576576. R62240, 17May50, P. G. Wodehouse (A) DECKERS ON THE COAST, by William McFee. (In the Atlantic monthly, July 1923)

I have observed in my parochial experience (haud ignarus mali) that the Devil is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage.

It is true that its inhabitants were accustomed to the water, and to the sight of vessels, from the two-decker to the little shabby-looking craft that brought ashes from town, to meliorate the sandy lands of Suffolk.

With fur cap, official garb, and the excursive eye of a martinet, he inspects every detail of preparationsees each passenger stowed seriatim in his special placethen takes his position in frontgives the word to his jack-booted vice, whose responsive whip cracks assentand away rolls the ponderous machine, with all the rumbling majesty of a three-decker from off the stocks.