“Well, you Britishers will be inclined to deal, I guess,” he observed; and, without waiting for an answer, ordered the people in his boat to send up some cases of claret and boxes of oranges which he had brought. A whip was sent down, and they were soon had on deck, and I must say we were not sorry to make a deal with him—that is to say, the captain and gun-room officers took the claret, and the midshipmen the oranges.
“Well, I guess you’ve got them dirt cheap,” observed the Yankee skipper, as he pocketed the money. “But mind now, I don’t warrant them all sound.”
Had he made the remark before we bought them, we might have thanked him for his honesty. On opening the cases we found that more than one half were rotten, and that the rest would not keep many days. That, of course, was the reason he had sold them.
He finished his cigar while he went on talking much in the same strain as he had done at first, and then coolly proposed inspecting the ship. As there was no objection to his so doing, he was allowed to go round the decks, when he might have counted thirty-six guns, and as fine a looking crew as ever stepped the deck of a man-of-war. At length Captain Nathan Noakes returned on board the Hickory Stick. Afterwards, when I repeated to the boatswain the remarks of Captain Noakes, his observation was—
“I cannot stand those Yankees—they do exaggerate so terribly. One cannot depend on a word they say.”
I made no reply, for it struck me that Mr Johnson himself did at times, as he would have said, rather overstate facts. I made the remark to Perigal.
“Well, boy, the boatswain is like most of us,” he answered; “we don’t see our own faults. I suspect no man would be more ready than he would to grow angry should his veracity be called in question.”
“But those stories of his own adventures are very amusing,” said I.
“Very,” said Perigal. “And as long as he confines himself to them no great harm is done; but if a man once gets into the habit of departing from the truth for the sake of amusing his hearers, he may not stop there, and will, very likely, tell a falsehood of a different character whenever it may suit his convenience to do so.”
The sun when setting indicated fine weather. During the night there was a light breeze, scarcely sufficient to send our heavy frigate through the water. When day dawned, however, our Yankee friend, we discovered, had managed to slip away, and was hull down to the south-west.