An hour or two later I went ashore and waited upon the admiral at his office, in accordance with instructions received from him on the previous day; and upon being ushered into his presence, he at once began to question me relative to the qualities of the Diane. I was able to speak nothing but good of her; for indeed what I had seen of her, during the passage to Port Royal, had convinced me that she was really a very fine vessel in every respect, a splendid sea-boat, wonderfully fast, and, I had no doubt, a thoroughly wholesome, comfortable craft in bad weather.
“Just so,” commented the admiral, when I had finished singing her praises; “what you have said quite confirms my own opinion of her, which is that, in capable hands, she may be made exceedingly useful. Moreover, she is more nearly a match for Morillo’s brigantine than is the little Tern, eh? Well, my lad, I have been thinking matters over, and have made up my mind that she is good enough to purchase into the service; so I will have it seen to at once, and of course I shall give you the command of her. She will want a considerable amount of attention at the hands of the shipwrights after the mauling that you gave her, but you shall supervise everything yourself, and they shall do nothing without your approval; so see to it that they don’t spoil her. I notice that she mounts six sixes of a side. Now I propose to alter that arrangement by putting four long nines in place of those six sixes, with an eighteen-pounder on her forecastle; and with such an armament as that, and a crew to match, you ought to be able to render an exceedingly good account of yourself. What do you think of my idea?”
I replied truthfully that I considered it excellent in every way; and we then launched into a discussion of minor details, with which I need not weary the reader, at the end of which I went aboard the Tern and paid off her crew, preparatory to her being turned over to the shipwrights, along with her prize.
It happened that just about this time there was an exceptionally heavy press of work in the dockyard; for there had been several frigate actions of late, and the resources of the staff were taxed to the utmost to effect the repairs following upon such events and to get the ships ready for sea again in the shortest possible time; with the result that such small fry as the Diane and the Tern were obliged to wait until the heaviest of the work was over and the frigates were again ready for service. It thus happened that, although I contrived to worry the dockyard superintendent into putting a few shipwrights aboard the Diane, three weeks passed, and still the brigantine was very far from being ready for sea. During this time I made my headquarters at “Mammy” Wilkinson’s hotel in Kingston,—that being the hotel especially affected by navy men,—although I was seldom there, the planters and big-wigs of the island generally proving wonderfully hospitable, and literally overwhelming me with invitations to take up my abode with them. But about the time that I have mentioned it happened that certain alterations were being effected aboard the brigantine, which I was especially anxious to have carried out according to my own ideas; I therefore spent the whole of the day, for several days in succession, at the dockyard, going up to Kingston at night, and sleeping at the hotel.
It was during this interval that, one night about ten o’clock, a negro presented himself at the hotel, inquiring for me; and upon my making my appearance in the entrance-hall, the fellow—a full-blooded African, dressed very neatly in a white shirt and white duck trousers, both scrupulously clean, for a wonder—approached me, and, ducking his head respectfully, inquired—
“You Massa Courtenay, sar, cap’n ob de man-o’-war schoonah Tern?”
“Well, yes,” I replied, “my name is Courtenay, and I commanded the Tern up to the time of her being paid off; so I suppose I may fairly assume that I am the individual you have been inquiring for. What is it you want with me?”
“You know a genterman, nam’d Lindsay, sar?” asked the negro, instead of replying to my question.
“Certainly I do,” answered I; “what of him?”
“Why, sar, he hab got into a lilly scrape down on de wharf, and de perlice hab put him into de lock-up. Dey don’ beliebe dat he am man-o’-war bucra, and he say, ‘Will you be so good as to step down dere an’ identerfy him an’ bail him out?’”