He dictated, but ramblingly, with so much of incoherence, indeed, breaking off to talk to himself, to ask the time, to whisper some sea adventure, which he would go half through with and then drop, that, even if my memory carried what he said, it would be mere silliness in the reading. However, his wish was to dictate a will, which was to be embodied in a very few sentences. So when he had made an end and lay still, I wrote as follows:
‘Brig Black Watch, at sea. February the 24th, 1815. This is the last will and testament of me, Michael Greaves, master of the above brig—at the time of signing this in full command of my senses. I hereby bequeath all the money I have in the world to the Church of England, in memory of my mother; and I desire that the money I thus bequeath may be devoted to a memorial that shall forever perpetuate the love I bear to the memory of my mother, whose soul is with God.’
It was the best form of will I could devise, knowing little of such matters; but since it was his wish that the money should be dedicated to God, most reasonable was it that I, as an Englishman, should wish to see it bequeathed to the Church of my own and of his country. And I was the warmer in this desire in that the money was Spanish; by which I mean that nothing could be more proper than that the dollars of the most bigoted people in all creation, in religious matters, should go to the support of the purest, the most liberal, the very noblest of all churches. Bear ye in mind, it was the year 1815; when our esteem of the foreigner and his faith was not as it is.
“What have you written?” said he.
I read aloud.
“It will do,” he exclaimed; “read it again.” I did so.
“Will not thirty thousand pounds build a church?” said he.
“It will build a ship,” said I. “I know nothing of the cost of building a church.”
“Write down that I want a church built,” said he.
This I did.