Thus we talked on, and, thankful for the present, did not dream that storms of adversity might yet be in store for us, yet not sent without a gracious and merciful object to try and improve our hearts.
We reached Leith in safety, and as neither of us had before been in Edinburgh, we spent some days there to view that beautiful and interesting city. Such it was even in those days; but though it has lost somewhat in picturesque effect, it has since then been greatly improved.
It may seem strange that a sailor should be afraid of trusting himself at sea; but reason as I might, I could not bring myself to take my wife to the south by water. I therefore prepared to convey her to London by coach, and from thence to Portsmouth. The expense was very great; but I promised her that I would toil hard in whatever occupation I undertook to make it up, and at last she acceded to my wishes. We calculated that we should be about a week or ten days getting to London, for those were times when even the coaches on the great northern road went very leisurely along, and it was not for some time after that they were superseded by the fast London and Edinburgh mail. Times have indeed changed with all of us.
We left Edinburgh one morning at daybreak, and proceeded south to Berwick, where we stopped. Our next stage was York. There we rested the greater part of the day, for my wife seemed very much fatigued, and when I saw how fine the weather continued, I began to repent that I had not gone, as she wished, by sea. I had placed her inside, while I went on the top of the coach. I observed that our fat old coachman, who, although it was summer weather, was muffled up in a greatcoat, with a red comforter up to his eyes, whenever we stopped to change horses went into the bar of the roadside inn and took a pretty stiff glass of brandy and water to keep out the damp, as he told his passengers. At last four rather frisky horses were brought out and harnessed to the coach.
“Steady now, Mr Currycomb; we have some ugly hills to go up and down,” remarked one of the passengers who had watched his drinking proceedings with some little anxiety.
“Oh, never fear me, sir,” answered the old man, in a thick, husky voice. “I’ve driven this road, man and boy, for the last fifty years, and I should think I know how to take a coach along it without anybody telling me how to do it, do you see. If I thinks it’s best to trot down a hill, why I’ll do it, and no one shall tell me not. That’s what I’ve got to say.”
I have frequently met the same sort of obstinate characters among seamen, the very men who manage to get their ships cast away; but I fancied that they were not to be found among those who live among the civilising influences of the shore.
For some time we went on pretty well, though now and then the overloaded coach going down a hill rocked to and fro pretty violently. When we stopped the next time, a gentleman who had gone in the inside, because there was no place on the outside, said that he had never been accustomed to travel inside, and that it made him very ill, and asked if any gentleman would be willing to change places with him, and that, as he had already paid his fare, it would not put anybody who would so oblige him to further cost.
I at once said, that as my wife was inside, I should be very happy to be the means of accommodating him, so he mounted on the top of the coach, and I joined Margaret inside. Away we went once more rattling along over the road. The gentleman, I found, whose seat I had got had no idea that the coachman was the worse for liquor, but fancied that the rocking of the coach, which I had observed so palpably from the outside, was only the usual motion, and that he would be free from it outside. Suddenly I felt that we were going on much faster than usual.
“What is the matter?” exclaimed Margaret, as clouds of dust arose on each hand, and we saw people starting aside and looking anxiously after us as we were whirled along. “Oh, the horses have run away!”