It was a pleasure on getting home to find Mary looking bright and cheerful, with her work or books before her, and Nancy busy preparing supper. The old man and I always took our dinner with us—generally a loaf of bread, with a piece of cheese or bacon or fried fish, and sometimes Irish stew in a basin, done up in a cloth, and a stone bottle of water. I remember saying that I was born with a wooden spoon in my mouth, but when I come to reflect what excellent parents I had, and what true friends I found in Tom Swatridge and Nancy, I may say that, after all, it must have been of silver, though perhaps not quite so polished as those found in the mouths of some infants.
Another change in my life was about to occur. We had taken off a gentleman from Gosport. From his way of speaking, we found that he was a foreigner, and he told us that he wanted to be put on board a foreign ship lying at Spithead.
“Is dere any danger?” he asked, looking out across the Channel, and thinking what a long distance he had to go.
“Not a bit, sir,” answered Tom, for the water was as smooth as a mill-pond. There was a light air from the southward, and there was not a cloud in the sky. “We might cross the Channel to France for that matter, with weather like this.”
“Oh no, no! I only want to get to dat sheep out dere!” cried the foreigner, fancying that we might carry him across against his will.
“Certainly, mounseer; we’ll put you aboard in a jiffy as soon as we gets a breeze to help us along,” said Tom.
We pulled round Blockhouse Point, along shore, till we came off Fort Monkton, when opening Stokes Bay, the wind hauling a little to the westward, we made sail and stood for Spithead. A number of vessels were brought up there, and at the Mother-bank, off Ryde, among them a few men-of-war, but mostly merchantmen, outward bound, or lately come in waiting for orders. It was difficult as yet to distinguish the craft the foreigner wanted to be put aboard.
“It won’t matter if we have to dodge about a little to find her, mounseer, for one thing’s certain: we couldn’t have a finer day for a sail,” observed old Tom, as we glided smoothly over the blue water, shining brightly in the rays of the unclouded sun.
He gave me the helm while he looked out for the foreign ship.
“That’s her, I’ve a notion,” he said at length, pointing to a deep-waisted craft with a raised poop and forecastle, and with much greater beam than our own wall-sided merchantmen. “Keep her away a bit, Peter. Steady! That will do.”