mment, "will you allow me to go on shore under the
charge of the sergeant of marines?"

"That," said he, "would be just as much an infringement of my orders as
letting you go by yourself. You cannot go on shore, sir."

These last words he uttered in a very peremptory manner, and, quitting
the deck, left me to my own reflections and my own resources.

Intercourse by letter between Eugenia and myself was perfectly easy; but
that was not all I wanted. I had promised to meet her at nine o'clock
in the evening. It was now sunset; the boats were all hoisted up; no
shore-boat was near, and there was no mode of conveyance but _a la
nage_, which Mr Talbot himself had suggested only as proving its utter
impracticability; but he did not know me half so well at the time as he
did afterwards.

The ship lay two miles from the shore, the wind was from the south-west,
and the tide moving to the eastward; so that, with wind and tide both in
my favour, I calculated on fetching South Sea Castle. After dark I took
my station in the fore-channels. It was the 20th of March, and very
cold. I undressed myself, made all my clothes up into a very tight
bundle, and fastened them on my hat, which retained its proper position;
then, lowering myself very gently into the water, like another Leander,
I struck out to gain the arms of my Hero.

Before I had got twenty yards from the ship, I was perceived by the
sentinel, who, naturally supposing I was a pressed man endeavouring to
escape, hailed me to come back. Not being obeyed, the officer of the
watch ordered him to fire at me. A ball whizzed over my head, and
struck the water between my hands. A dozen more followed, all of them
tolerably well directed; but I struck out, and the friendly shades of
night, and increasing distance from the ship, soon protected me. A
waterman, seeing the flashes and hearing the reports of the muskets,
concluded that he might chance to pick up a fare. He pulled towards me,
I hailed him, and he took me in, before I had got half a quarter of a
mile from the ship.

"I doubt whether you would ever have fetched the shore on that tack, my
lad," said the old man. "You left your ship two hours too soon: you
would have met the ebb-tide running strong out of the harbour; and the
first thing you would have made, if you could have kept up your head
above water, would have been the Ower's."

While the old man was pulling and talking, I was shivering and dressing,
a