shelvy

Go fetch me a quart of sack ; put a toast in ’t .

Have I lived to be carried in a basket like a barrow
of butcher’s offal , and to be thrown in the Thames ?
Well , if I be served such another trick , I’ll have my
brains ta’en out and buttered , and give them to a
dog for a New Year’s gift . ’Sblood , the rogues
slighted me into the river with as little remorse as
they would have drowned a blind bitch’s puppies ,
fifteen i’ th’ litter ! And you may know by my size
that I have a kind of alacrity in sinking ; if the bottom
were as deep as hell , I should down . I had
been drowned , but that the shore was shelvy and
shallow — a death that I abhor , for the water swells
a man , and what a thing should I have been when
I had been swelled ! By the Lord , I should have
been a mountain of mummy .