“Yes, very true; but you see, Tom, that wouldn’t do aboard ship. That’s just the way most of the seamen would puzzle at it. I must have the answer in a moment, and that’s why you must practise.”
In the evening, when Bramble was smoking his pipe, I was seated by him, and every minute he would change the place of the iron skewer, with. “How’s her head, Tom?”
“We must get your ’prentice papers signed before we go afloat again,” said Bramble, “for they pick up boys as well as men for the King’s service, and you’re a stout boy for your age.”
“Were you ever pressed yourself?” inquired I.
“No, but I had a narrow chance once, and had not our captain been a smart fellow I and many more would have been serving the King at this present moment.”
“Tell me how that was,” said I.
“Well, as soon as Bessy has done rattling with the cups and saucers, I will.”
“I’ve done now, father,” said Bessy, taking her seat on a stool close to Bramble’s feet.
“Well, then, before I passed for pilot, just after the breaking out of the war, I took it into my head to try my chance at privateering. There was plenty to pick up at that time, and some of the Deal men had been very fortunate, so I went on board of a twelve-gun lugger, commanded by Captain Shank, fitted out in the river, with a crew of sixty men. The press was very hot at that time, and our men were kept at the crimps’ houses until all was ready, when we started, and got off clear into the Channel without being overhauled.
“We had been out a fortnight, keeping well on the French coast, and had picked up two good prizes, when one morning, as the fog was cleared up with a sharp northerly wind, we found ourselves right under the lee of an English frigate, not a mile from us. There was a bubble of a sea, for the wind had been against the tide previous to its changing, and we were then about six or seven miles from the French coast, just between Boulogne and Cape Grisnez, lying to for the fog to clear away. As soon as we saw the frigate we knew that she would board us, and we were all in a terrible fright.” Here Bramble shifted the skewer and said, “How’s her head, Tom?”