Turned out of house and home.
We had just landed the gaily-dressed individual who had announced himself the nephew of old Tom Swatridge. Thinking that he might possibly be the person he said he was, and not knowing what tricks he might play, I was intending to row home, when a gentleman, with two young ladies and a boy, who I knew by their dress to be Quakers, came down, wishing to take a row round the harbour, and afterwards to visit the Victualling Yard.
After we had pulled off some way, I asked if they would like to go aboard the Victory.
“No, thank thee, young friend, we take no pleasure in visiting scenes, afloat or on shore, where the blood of our fellow-creatures has been shed,” answered the gentleman.
As he spoke I thought by his look and the tone of his voice that he must be Mr Silas Gray, who had come to our house when the poor girl mother took in was dying, but I did not like to ask him. The young people called him father. At last he began to ask Jim and me questions, and how, young as we were, we came to have a boat by ourselves.
“I suppose thy father is ill on shore?” he said.
Then I told him how he was lost at Spithead, and mother had died, and old Tom had been blown up, and I had taken his wherry, seeing there was no one else to own her; and how Mary and Nancy and I lived on in his house.
“And art thou and this other lad brothers?” he inquired.
“No, sir; but Jim Pulley and I feel very much as if we were,” I answered. “My name is Peter Trawl.”
“And was thy mother a bumboat-woman, a true, honest soul, one of the excellent of the earth?” he asked.