Fortune favoured him at the outset, and he considerably increased his legacy.
With the customary infatuation of men who gain money by risking the loss of it, he presumed on his good luck.

One pecuniary disaster followed another, and left him literally penniless.

He was found again, in England, exhibiting an open boat in which he and a companion had made one of those foolhardy voyages across the Atlantic, which have now happily ceased to interest the public.

To a friend who remonstrated with him, he answered that he reckoned on being lost at sea, and on so committing a suicide worthy of the desperate life that he had led.

The last accounts of him, after this, were too vague and too contradictory to be depended on.