"Hendry Watty! catch it quick! It's my own leg I've thrown down by mistake."
The leg struck the ground and bounced high, and Hendry Watty made a leap after it.
And I reckon it's asleep he must have been; for what he caught was not Mrs. Rowett's leg, but the jib-boom of a deep-laden brigantine that was running him down in the dark. And as he sprang for it, his boat was crushed by the brigantine's fore-foot and went down under his very boot-soles. At the same time he let out a yell, and two or three of the crew ran forward and hoisted him up to the bowsprit and in on deck, safe and sound.
But the brigantine happened to be outward bound for the River Plate; so that, with one thing and another, 'twas eleven good months before my grandfather landed again at Port Loe. And who should be the first man he sees standing above the cove but William John Dunn.
"I'm very glad to see you," says William John Dunn.
"Thank you kindly," answers my grandfather; "and how's Mary Polly?"
"Why, as for that," he says, "she took so much looking after, that I couldn't feel I was properly keeping her under my eye till I married her, last June month."
"You was always one to over-do things," said my grandfather.
"But if you was alive an' well, why didn' you drop us a line?"