We had a somewhat long and stormy passage, and were half frozen to death before it was over, most of us who had been for years in the West Indies being little prepared for cold weather. We should have been much worse off, however, in a line-of-battle ship, but in the midshipmen’s berth we managed to keep ourselves tolerably warm when below. At length we sighted the coast of Ireland.
“Hurrah, Mr Terence! There’s the old country,” said Larry, throwing up his hat in his excitement, and nearly losing it overboard. “If the captain would only put into Cork harbour, we would be at home in two or three days, and shure they’d be mighty pleased to see us at Ballinahone. What lashings of whisky, and pigs, and praties they’d be after eating and drinking in our honour, just come home from the wars. Och! I wish we were there, before a blazing turf fire, with the peat piled up, and every one of them red and burning, instead of being out here with these cold winds almost blowing our teeth down our throats.”
The picture Larry drew made me more than ever wish to get home. Not that I was tired of a sea life, though I had found it a pretty hard one in some respects; but I longed to see my father, and mother, and brothers, and sisters again, and my kind uncle the major, as I had not heard from them for many a long day. Letters in those days were conveyed to distant stations very irregularly. I had only received two all the time I had been away. Indeed, friends, knowing the great uncertainty which existed of letters reaching, thought it scarcely worth while to write them. We could just see the land, blue and indistinct, over our larboard bow, when the wind veered to the eastward, and instead of standing for Plymouth, as we expected to do, we were kept knocking about in the Chops of the Channel for three long weeks, till our water was nearly exhausted, and our provisions had run short. There we were, day after day, now standing on one tack, now on another, never gaining an inch of ground. Every morning the same question was put, and the same answer given—
“Blowing as hard as ever, and right in our teeth.”
We sighted a number of merchant vessels, and occasionally a man-of-war, homeward-bound from other stations, but all were as badly off as we were.
At last one morning the look-out at the masthead shouted, “A sail to the eastward coming down before the wind.” It was just possible she might be an enemy. The drum beat to quarters, and the ship was got ready for action. On getting nearer, however, she showed English colours, and we then made out her number to be that of the Thetis frigate. As soon as we got near each other we both hove-to. Though there was a good deal of sea running, two of our boats were soon alongside her to obtain water, and some casks of bread and beef, for, as far as we could tell to the contrary, we might be another month knocking about where we were. In the meantime, one of her boats brought a lieutenant on board us.
“Peace has been signed between Great Britain and France,” were almost the first words he uttered when he stepped on deck. “I can’t give particulars, but all I know is, that everything we have been fighting for is to remain much as it was before. We are to give up what we have taken from the French, and the French what they have taken from us, and we are to shake hands and be very good friends. There has been great rejoicing on shore, and bonfires and feasts in honour of the event.”
I can’t say that the news produced any amount of satisfaction to those on board the Maidstone.
“Then my hope of promotion has gone,” groaned Nettleship; “and you, Paddy, will have very little chance of getting yours, for which I’m heartily sorry; for after the creditable way in which you have behaved since you came to sea, I fully expected to see you rise in your profession, and be an honour to it.”
“What’s the use of talking to sucking babies like Paddy and Tom here about their promotion, in these piping times of peace which are coming on us,” cried old Grumpus, “if we couldn’t get ours while the war was going on?”