Whence our captain had acquired his power of prophecy, when he promised us and himself a prosperous wind, I will not determine; it is sufficient to observe that he was a false prophet, and that the weathercocks continued to point as before.
He would not, however, so easily give up his skill in prediction. He persevered in asserting that the wind was changed, and, having weighed his anchor, fell down that afternoon to St Helen’s, which was at about the distance of five miles; and whither his friend the tide, in defiance of the wind, which was most manifestly against him, softly wafted him in as many hours.
Here, about seven in the evening, before which time we could not procure it, we sat down to regale ourselves with some roasted venison, which was much better drest than we imagined it would be, and an excellent cold pasty which my wife had made at Ryde, and which we had reserved uncut to eat on board our ship, whither we all chearfully exulted in being returned from the presence of Mrs Francis, who, by the exact resemblance she bore to a fury, seemed to have been with no great propriety settled in paradise.
Friday, July 24.—As we passed by Spithead on the preceding evening we saw the two regiments of soldiers who were just returned from Gibraltar and Minorca; and this day a lieutenant belonging to one of them, who was the captain’s nephew, came to pay a visit to his uncle. He was what is called by some a very pretty fellow; indeed, much too pretty a fellow at his years; for he was turned of thirty-four, though his address and conversation would have become him more before he had reached twenty. In his conversation, it is true, there was something military enough, as it consisted chiefly of oaths, and of the great actions and wise sayings of Jack, and Will, and Tom of our regiment, a phrase eternally in his mouth; and he seemed to conclude that it conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety and importance that it intitled him, like the head of a profession, or a first minister, to be the subject of conversation among those who had not the least personal acquaintance with him. This did not much surprise me, as I have seen several examples of the same; but the defects in his address, especially to the women, were so great that they seemed absolutely inconsistent with the behaviour of a pretty fellow, much less of one in a red coat; and yet, besides having been eleven years in the army, he had had, as his uncle informed me, an education in France. This, I own, would have appeared to have been absolutely thrown away had not his animal spirits, which were likewise thrown away upon him in great abundance, borne the visible stamp of the growth of that country. The character to which he had an indisputable title was that of a merry fellow; so very merry was he that he laughed at everything he said, and always before he spoke. Possibly, indeed, he often laughed at what he did not utter, for every speech begun with a laugh, though it did not always end with a jest. There was no great analogy between the characters of the uncle and the nephew, and yet they seemed intirely to agree in enjoying the honour which the red-coat did to his family. This the uncle expressed with great pleasure in his countenance, and seemed desirous of shewing all present the honour which he had for his nephew, who, on his side, was at some pains to convince us of his concurring in this opinion, and at the same time of displaying the contempt he had for the parts, as well as the occupation, of his uncle, which he seemed to think reflected some disgrace on himself, who was a member of that profession which makes every man a gentleman. Not that I would be understood to insinuate that the nephew endeavoured to shake off or disown his uncle, or indeed to keep him at any distance. On the contrary, he treated him with the utmost familiarity, often calling him Dick, and dear Dick, and old Dick, and frequently beginning an oration with D——n me, Dick.
All this condescension on the part of the young man was received with suitable marks of complaisance and obligation by the old one; especially when it was attended with evidences of the same familiarity with general officers and other persons of rank; one of whom, in particular, I know to have the pride and insolence of the devil himself, and who, without some strong bias of interest, is no more liable to converse familiarly with a lieutenant than of being mistaken in his judgment of a fool; which was not, perhaps, so certainly the case of the worthy lieutenant, who, in declaring to us the qualifications which recommended men to his countenance and conversation, as well as what effectually set a bar to all hopes of that honour, exclaimed, “No, sir, by the d—I hate all fools—No, d——n me, excuse me for that. That’s a little too much, old Dick. There are two or three officers of our regiment whom I know to be fools; but d——n me if I am ever seen in their company. If a man hath a fool of a relation, Dick, you know he can’t help that, old boy.”
Such jokes as these the old man not only took in good part, but glibly gulped down the whole narrative of his nephew; nor did he, I am convinced, in the least doubt of our as readily swallowing the same. This made him so charmed with the lieutenant, that it is probable we should have been pestered with him the whole evening, had not the north wind, dearer to our sea-captain even than this glory of his family, sprung suddenly up, and called aloud to him to weigh his anchor.
While this ceremony was performing, the sea-captain ordered out his boat to row the land-captain to shore; not indeed on an uninhabited island, but one which, in this part, looked but little better, not presenting us the view of a single house. Indeed, our old friend, when his boat returned on shore, perhaps being no longer able to stifle his envy of the superiority of his nephew, told us with a smile that the young man had a good five mile to walk before he could be accommodated with a passage to Portsmouth.
It appeared now that the captain had been only mistaken in the date of his prediction, by placing the event a day earlier than it happened; for the wind which now arose was not only favourable but brisk, and was no sooner in reach of our sails than it swept us away by the back of the Isle of Wight, and, having in the night carried us by Christchurch and Peveral-point, brought us the next noon, Saturday, July 25, off the island of Portland, so famous for the smallness and sweetness of its mutton, of which a leg seldom weighs four pounds. We would have bought a sheep, but our captain would not permit it; though he needed not have been in such a hurry, for presently the wind, I will not positively assert in resentment of his surliness, shewed him a dog’s trick, and slily slipt back again to his summer-house in the south-west.
The captain now grew outrageous, and, declaring open war with the wind, took a resolution, rather more bold than wise, of sailing in defiance of it, and in its teeth. He swore he would let go his anchor no more, but would beat the sea while he had either yard or sail left. He accordingly stood from the shore, and made so large a tack that before night, though he seemed to advance but little on his way, he was got out of sight of land.
Towards the evening the wind began, in the captain’s own language, and indeed it freshened so much, that before ten it blew a perfect hurricane.