been satisfied.

The frigate's boat put us on board. It blew fresh from the eastward,
and I instantly put the helm up, and shaped my course for the old rock.
The breeze soon freshened into a gale; we ran slap before it, but soon
found it necessary to take in the top-gallant sails. This we at last
accomplished, one at a time. We then thought a reef or two in the
topsails would be acceptable; but that was impossible. We tried a
Spanish reef, that is, let the yards come down on the cap; and she flew
before the gale, which had now increased to a very serious degree. Our
cargo of wine and tobacco was, unfortunately, stowed by a Spanish and
not a British owner. The difference was very material to me. An
Englishman, knowing the vice of his countrymen, would have placed the
wine underneath, and the tobacco above. Unfortunately it was, in this
instance, the reverse, and my men very soon helped themselves to as much
as rendered them nearly useless to me, being more than half seas over.

We got on pretty well, however, till about two o'clock in the morning,
when the man at the helm, unable to wake the other two seamen to fetch
him a drop, thought he might trust the brig to steer herself for a
minute, while he quenched his thirst at the wine-cask: the vessel
instantly broached to, that is, came with her broadside to the wind and
sea, and away went the mainmast by the board. Fortunately, the foremast
stood. The man who had just quitted the helm had not time to get drunk,
and the other two were so much frightened that they got sober.

We cleared the wreck as well as we could, got her before the wind again,
and continued on our course. But a British sailor, the most daring of
all men, is likewise the most regardless of warning or of consequences.
The loss of the mainmast, instead of showing my men the madness of their
indulgence in drink, turned the scale the opposite way. If they could
get drunk with two masts, how much more could they do so with one, when
they had only half as much sail to look after? With such a rule of
three there was no reasoning; and they got drunk, and continued drunk
during the whole passage.

Good luck often attends us when we don't deserve it:

"The sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,"

as Dibdin says, has an eye upon us. I knew we could not easily get out
of the Gut of Gibraltar without knowing it; and accordingly, on the
third day after leaving the frigate, we made the rock early