"No, no," said Mr Talbot, "I am too old a hand to be caught that way. I have my orders, and I would not let my father go on shore, if the captain ordered me to keep him on board; and I tell you, in perfect good humour, that out of this ship you do not go, unless you swim on shore, and that I do not think you will attempt. Here," continued he, "to prove to you there is no ill-will on my part, here is the captain's note."
It was short, sweet, and complimentary, as it related to myself, and was as follows:—
"Keep that d——d young scamp, Mildmay, on board."
"Will you allow me, then," said I, folding up the note, and returning it to him without any comment, "will you allow me to go on shore under the charge of the sergeant of marines?"
"That," said he, "would be just as much an infringement of my orders as letting you go by yourself. You cannot go on shore, sir."
These last words he uttered in a very peremptory manner, and, quitting the deck, left me to my own reflections and my own resources.
Intercourse by letter between Eugenia and myself was perfectly easy; but that was not all I wanted. I had promised to meet her at nine o'clock in the evening. It was now sunset; the boats were all hoisted up; no shore boat was near, and there was no mode of conveyance but à la nage, which Mr Talbot himself had suggested only as proving its utter impracticability; but he did not know me half so well at the time as he did afterwards.
The ship lay two miles from the shore, the wind was from the south-west, and the tide moving to the eastward; so that, with wind and tide both in my favour, I calculated on fetching South Sea Castle. After dark I took my station in the fore-channels. It was the 20th of March, and very cold. I undressed myself, made all my clothes up into a very tight bundle, and fastened them on my hat, which retained its proper position; then, lowering myself very gently into the water, like another Leander I struck out to gain the arms of my Hero.
Before I had got twenty yards from the ship, I was perceived by the sentinel, who, naturally supposing I was a pressed man endeavouring to escape, hailed me to come back. Not being obeyed, the officer of the watch ordered him to fire at me. A ball whizzed over my head, and struck the water between my hands. A dozen more followed, all of them tolerably well directed; but I struck out, and the friendly shades of night, and increasing distance from the ship, soon protected me. A waterman, seeing the flashes and hearing the reports of the muskets, concluded that he might chance to pick up a fare. He pulled towards me, I hailed him, and he took me in, before I had got half a quarter of a mile from the ship.
"I doubt whether you would ever have fetched the shore on that tack, my lad," said the old man. "You left your ship two hours too soon: you would have met the ebb-tide running strong out of the harbour; and the first thing you would have made, if you could have kept up your head above water, would have been the Ower's."