“Not under two guineas,” replied Tom, aside. “Are you in a great hurry, sir?” continued he, addressing the young man.
“Yes, in a devil of a hurry; I shall lose my ship. What will you take me for?”
“Two guineas, sir.”
“Very well. Just come up to the public-house here, and put in my traps.”
We brought down his luggage, put it into the wherry, and started down the river with the tide. Our fare was very communicative, and we found out that he was the master’s mate of the Immortalité, forty-gun frigate, lying off Gravesend, which was to drop down next morning and wait for sailing orders at the Downs. We carried the tide with us, and in the afternoon were close to the frigate, whose blue ensign waved proudly over the taffrail. There was a considerable sea arising from the wind meeting the tide, and before we arrived close to her we had shipped a great deal of water; and when we were alongside, the wherry, with the chest in her bows, pitched so heavily that we were afraid of being swamped. Just as a rope had been made fast to the chest, and they were weighing it out of the wherry, the ship’s launch with water came alongside, and, whether from accident or wilfully, I know not, although I suspect the latter, the midshipman who steered her shot her against the wherry, which was crushed in, and immediately filled, leaving Tom and me in the water, and in danger of being jammed to death between the launch and the side of the frigate. The seamen in the boat, however, forced her off with their oars, and hauled us in, while our wherry sank with her gunwale even with the water’s edge, and floated away astern.
As soon as we had shaken ourselves a little, we went up the side, and asked one of the officers to send a boat to pick up our wherry.
“Speak to the first lieutenant—there he is,” was the reply.
I went up to the person pointed out to me; “If you please, sir—”
“What the devil do you want?”
“A boat, sir, to—”