“No; we shall meet again to-morrow, I hope.”
The three of us went on deck. My uncle called his boat alongside; Miss Aurora and he entered her, and they shoved off. I leaned upon the rail, watching them as they rowed ashore. The boat made for the beach, a little to the northward of Sandown Castle. There was no play or surf to render the landing inconvenient. My uncle helped the girl out of the boat, and they walked off across the sand hills—those same sand hills which had provided me with my horrible experience of the gibbet.
But the gibbet was gone; the summer sun was shining upon the grassy billows of sand. Afar, on the confines of that hilly waste, were many trees, with a single church steeple among them—the shore sign of the old town of Sandwich. Over the bows ran the white, low terraces of the Ramsgate cliffs, soaring as they rounded out of the bay, and gathering a milkier softness as they rose. Abreast was the yellow line of the Goodwins, and yonder on the quarter stretched Deal Beach, rich with the various colors of many boats hauled high and dry. A row of seaward-facing houses flanked that beach; I could see the corner of the alley where I was gripped by the press-gang, and memories of after-days swarmed into my head.
But there was work to be done; I broke away from my idle musings, and ordered the men to moor ship in obedience to my uncle’s instructions. Cable was veered out, and a second anchor let go. I had found a bag of thirty-two guineas and some silver in Greaves’ cabin after my poor friend’s death. I used this money to settle with the two fishermen, and sent them ashore. I then hailed a galley, and dispatched her to Deal for such a supply of fresh meat and vegetables and ale as would give all hands of us a good dinner and supper, and when the punt was gone I called the crew aft, told them that I’d take them ashore next day, and pay them off in English money at my uncle’s house near Sandwich; I also thanked them for their good behavior during the long passage from the Southern Ocean, and shook each man by the hand as a friend who had served me very honestly at a time when my necessities were great.
The wind shifted during the day, and a number of ships brought up in the Downs. A few small craft dropped anchor near the brig.
I heeded them not, nor the bigger vessels beyond. I feared only the arrival of a man-of-war, and the being boarded by her for men. In the afternoon a fine ship-sloop passed through the Gulls heading west; I watched her with the steadfast eye of a cat, dreading to behold her tall breasts of topsails suddenly shiver to the wind, her loftier canvas vanish, and her anchor fall. She foamed onward, heeling a bright line of copper off the Foreland, and vanished round that giant elbow of chalk with her yards bracing up, and her bowlines tricing out for a “ratch” down Channel.
When the evening came along, the dusk was deep but clear. There was no wet; the breeze was about south—a steady, warm wind—a six-knot breeze. The scene of Downs was very dark; you would think it black by contrast with the picture it makes by night in these times. Ships then showed no riding lights. Here and there a lantern gleamed from the end of a spritsail yard, from the extremity of a mizzen-boom. The Goodwin Sands were lampless, save in the far north, where burnt the spark first kindled by that worthy Quaker of North Shields, Henry Taylor. The lights of the little town of Ramsgate glowed soft and faint upon the face of the dark heap of cliff afar; the lights along Deal Beach twinkled windily. It was a very proper night for our adventure—dark, and but little sea, and wind enough.
Shortly after six bells—eleven by the clock—I spied a shadow to windward, drawing out of the south. The dusky phantom came along slowly, as though she took a wary look at the several little craft she passed. She shaped herself out upon the darkness presently—a large Deal lugger. When she was under our stern she hailed. I, who had been impatiently awaiting the arrival of this vessel, sprang on to the taffrail and sang out:
“What lugger’s that?”
“The Seamen’s Friend,” was the reply.