He gave us both a sharp nod, and hastily followed his wife, while I stayed to pester my father with endless questions about our new home.
Chapter Two.
The month which followed was one scene of excitement to me. We went into lodgings in Bristol, and my father seemed to be always busy making purchases, or seeing the different gentlemen who were going out with us in the same ship.
I recollect many of their faces. There was the General, a firm, kindly-looking man, who always seemed to me as if he could not possibly be a soldier, he was too quiet. Then there was Colonel Preston, a handsome, florid gentleman, ten years older than my father, and I heard that his wife, two sons and daughter were to be of the party.
In a misty kind of way, too, I can recollect that the gentlemen who came and had long talks with my father, used to chat about the plantations in Virginia and Carolina, and about a charter from the King, and that the place we were going to was to be called Georgia, because the King’s name was the same as mine.
Then, too, there was a great deal of talk about the enemy; and as I used to sit and listen, I understood that the Spaniards were the enemy, and that they lived in Florida. But every one laughed; and my father, I remember, said gravely—
“I do not fear anything that the Spaniards can do to hinder us, gentlemen, I am more disposed to dread the climate.”
A great deal that followed has now, at this time of writing, become confused and mixed up; but I can remember the cheering from the wharves as our ship floated away with the tide, people talking about us as adventurers, and that soon after it came on to blow, and my next recollections are of being in a dark cabin lit by a lantern, which swung to and fro, threatening sometimes to hit the smoky ceiling. I did not pay much heed to it though, for I was too ill, and the only consolation I had was that of seeing Sarah’s motherly face by the dim light, and hearing her kindly, comforting words.