" Although I could not but feel proud of the
compliment, yet I did not much like going in my very best uniform, and
would have run down and changed it, but the marine officer and all the
people were in the boat, and I could not keep it waiting, so down the
side I went, and we shoved off. We had, besides the boat's crew, the
marine officer, the purser, the gun-room steward, the captain's steward,
and the purser's steward; so that we were pretty full. It blew hard from
the S.E., and there was a sea running, but as the tide was flowing into
the harbour there was not much bubble. We hoisted the foresail, flew
before the wind and tide, and in a quarter of an hour we were at Mutton
Cove, when the marine officer expressed his wish to land. The
landing-place was crowded with boats, and it was not without sundry
exchanges of foul words and oaths, and the bow-men dashing the point of
their boat-hooks into the shore-boats, to make them keep clear of us,
that we forced our way to the beach. The marine officer and all the
stewards then left the boat, and I had to look after the men. I had not
been there three minutes before the bow-man said that his wife was on
the wharf with his clothes from the wash, and begged leave to go and
fetch them. I refused, telling him that she could bring them to him. "Vy
now, Mr Simple," said the woman, "ar'n't you a nice lady's man, to go
for to ax me to muddle my way through all the dead dogs, cabbage-stalks,
and stinking hakes' heads, with my bran new shoes and clean stockings?"
I looked at her, and sure enough she was, as they say in France, _bien
chaussee_.
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