"What makes you think so?" said he.
"Why, there is not a vessel that heaves in sight," said I, "but the men look as if they wished themselves anywhere but where they are."
"Avast there, my man!" said he. "What! do you mean to say that they would not stand by their guns while there was a chance? Yes, they would, and long after; and, if you think otherwise, all I say is, you form opinions and talk of what you know nothing about."
Casting an angry look at me—the only one he ever gave—he squirted his quid over the bulwarks, and was walking away, when I stopped him.
"If I have given you offence, Mr Ross, nothing was farther from my intention. I cannot but observe the alarm caused by every sail that heaves in sight until she is made out to be a friend. Now, the little time I was at sea, before I fell overboard and was saved by you, every sail that hove in sight made the hearts of all on board leap for joy."
"Ho! ho!" and he laughed aloud. "Are you on that tack, my messmate? You are quite out in your reckoning, and becalmed in a fog; but I shall soon blow it away. There is not a man on board with whom I would not go into action with the fullest reliance upon his courage; and, were we to meet a French privateer, you would quickly see such a change as would satisfy you that my confidence is not misplaced. Every face, that the moment before expressed anxiety and alarm, would brighten up with joy; every man would stand to his gun as cheerfully as to the helm. It is their liberty the poor fellows are afraid of being deprived of by our own men-of-war—the liberty to toil for their parents or wives where they can get better wages than the Government allows. Danger, in any form, they meet undaunted when duty calls; it is for their countrymen they quail. Were the smallest sloop-of-war in the British navy to heave in sight, and a boat put off from her with a boy of a midshipman and eight or ten men, every one on board, who had not a protection, would shake in his shoes at her approach; yet, against an enemy, every man would stand to his gun until his ship was blown out of the water."
A new and painful feeling came over me as he spoke. I was myself an entered seaman, and, of course, liable to impressment; but the idea of being taken had never occurred to me. I wondered that it had not, after the scenes I had witnessed in the frigate; but my longing for home had entirely engrossed my mind. I was, indeed, home-sick, and weary of the sea. From this moment, no one on board felt more alarm than I did at the sight of a top-royal rising out of the distant waters. My feelings were near akin to those of a felon in concealment.
At length we reached the Moray Firth, in the evening, and arrangements were made for as many of the crew as could be spared to be landed at Cromarty, where the vessel was to put in. This was to avoid the danger of impressment in the Firth of Forth. I gave the captain an order upon my father for my passage, and the expense he had been at on my account, as I was to leave, with the others in the boat, as soon as we were off the town, which we hoped to reach in the morning. My anxiety was so great that I had kept the deck since nightfall. It was intensely dark; nothing broke the gloom but the flashes of light that gleamed for a moment upon the waves, as they rippled along the sides of the vessel, and the dull rays of the binnacle-lamp before the man at the helm. Bell after bell was struck, still I stood at the bows, leaning upon the bowsprit, unmindful of the chill wind from under the foretopsail, anxiously watching for the first tints of dawn. Tediously as the night wore on, I thought, when morning dawned, it had fled far too fast.
The dark clouds began at length to melt away in the east, and the distant mountain-tops to rise like grey clouds above the darkness that still hid the shores from our view. Gradually the whole face of nature began to emerge from the morning mists. We were just off the Sutors of Cromarty. My heart leapt for joy at the near prospect of being once more on firm ground, and so near home. Several of the crew had now joined me, and all eyes were directed to the entrance of the bay. Only a few minutes had elapsed in this pleasing hope—for it was still dullish on the horizon—when the report of a gun from seaward of us, so near that I thought it was alongside, made us start and look round. Each of us seemed as if we had been turned into stone by the alarming sound; while, so sudden was the revulsion of feeling, in my own case, that my heart almost ceased to beat. There, not half-a-league to windward of us, lay a frigate, with her sails shaking in the wind, and a boat, well-manned, with an officer in her stern, putting off from her.
So completely were we overcome by the sudden appearance of this dreaded object, which seemed to emerge from darkness, as the sun's first rays fell upon and whitened her sails, that we stood incapable of thought or action. The well-manned barge was carried, by the faint breeze and impetus of her oars, almost as swift as a gull on the wing. The report of the gun brought the captain and mate upon deck before we had recovered from our stupor.