While lying at the Hardway moorings, about three o’clock one morning we heard a voice halloing out ‘Come here, you sleepy-headed hounds, and take me out of a hole that I have got into.’ It being low water, the voice appeared to come from the mud. Two or three of us got into the cutter (for we always kept a boat out)[[63]] and went in the direction of the voice, where we found Moore up to his middle, and being a stout fellow it was no easy matter to extricate him. Had we not gone when we did he would have been suffocated as the tide was flowing. He had been keeping it up and missed his way to the Hard. He was one that would part with his last shilling to serve a friend or assist those in distress. I recollect while lying in Torbay with the grand fleet (we belonged to the Barfleur, 98, then), that I had not a sixpence and no opportunity of sending home; and I wanted to go on shore, and how to raise the wind I did not know; which coming to the ears of Ned, says he, ‘Tony, I have got a guinea and I am determined that you shall have half of it’—which he made me take. Would to God that he was alive and that I could shake hands with him now, and the rest of the brave fellows that are no more. Sit tibi terra levis!
We had a custom when the officers were at dinner in the wardroom, of dividing into parties; one division was to storm the other on the poop. In one of those attacks I succeeded in getting on the poop, when Kiel (who I have mentioned before) attacked me with a fixed bayonet and marked me in the thigh (all in good part). I then got hold of a musket, put in a small quantity of powder, and as he advanced, I fired. To my horror and amazement he fell flat on the deck, and when picked up his face was as black as a tinker’s, with the blood running down occasioned by some of the grains of powder sticking in. I shall never forget the terror I was in, but thank God he soon got well; only a few blue spots remained in his phiz, which never left him. This was the only time I ever fired a musket and probably will be the last. They used to say in the cockpit that he was troubled with St. Anthony’s fire (alluding to my name).
Another time when attacking the poop, I was standing on one of the quarter deck guns, when I received a violent blow on the face from a broomstick, which made my nose bleed off and on for several days. It was thrown at me by J. S. Carden (now Captain Carden[[64]]) and a hand swab was thrown at him, which falling short, entered one of the office windows, which put an end to the attack. It was laughable to see John Macredie take the part of Ajax Telamon, with a half-port for a shield and a boarding-pike for a lance. Culverhouse used to take the part of Diomede, but instead of a lance would use the single-stick, with which he was superior to anyone in the fleet. He was a very clever fellow, full of fun and drollery, and sung humorous songs in the most comic style. I remember a verse or two of one:
When first they impressed me and sent me to sea,
’Twas in the winter time in the making of hay,
They sent me on board of a ship called Torbay,
Oh! her white muzzle guns they did sore frighten me,
Musha tudey, etc.
Says the boatswain to Paddy, And what brought you here?
For the making of hay ’tis the wrong time of year.