“‘Well, Bob,’ I says, ‘then hadn’t you better get some?’
“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I will.’
“And then Gimlet, who had been standing by, he says—
“‘And we ain’t got no herrins.’
“The long and the short on it was that them two chaps goes ashore to buy some herrins and some taties, so as we could cook ’em aboard in the cabin, where we bargees reg’lar kind o’ lived, you know.
“I ought to ha’ knowed better; but I’d got an old Weekly Dispatch, as was the big paper in them days, and I was a-spelling it over about the corrynation o’ King George the Fourth, and the jolly row there’d been up by Westminster Abbey when Queen Carryline went up to the doors and said as she wanted to be crowned too. I might ha’ knowed what ud follow, but I was so wrapped up in that there old noosepaper, not being a fast reader, that I never thought about it; and consequently, when it was about low tide, and time for us to go, them two chaps was nowhere.
“‘Seen anything o’ my mates?’ I hollers to a chap ashore, for I was now out in the stream.
“‘They’re up at the Blue Posties,’ he says. ‘Shall I fetch ’em?’
“‘Yes, and be hanged to ’em!’ I says; and I goes down to the cabin, vexed like, gets hold o’ the flint and steel and my pipe, and was going to fill it, when I remembered what we took aboard, and I put ’em all back in the cupboard.
“Quarter of an hour arter, just as the tide was beginning to turn, them two chaps comes aboard, reg’lar tossicated, not to say drunk, and werry wild I was, and made ’em go down into the cabin, thinking as they’d sleep it off; and then, casting loose, I put out one of the sweeps, and we began to float gently up the river.