The damaged ship was at this time on our weather-quarter; we
accordingly handed the fore-topsail, and presently she was alongside.
We hailed her, that we intended to send a boat on board, and desired
her to heave-to, as we did, and presently she rounded to under our lee.
One of the quarter-boats was manned, with three of the carpenter's
crew, and six good men over and above her complement; but it was no
easy matter to get on board of her, let me tell you, after she had been
lowered, carefully watching the rolls, with four hands in. The moment
she touched the water, the tackles were cleverly unhooked, and the rest
of us tumbled on board, shin leather growing scarce, when we shoved
off. With great difficulty, and not without wet jackets, we, the
supernumeraries, got on board, and the boat returned to the _Torch_.
The evening when we landed in the lobster-box, as Jack loves to
designate a transport, was too far advanced for us to do anything
towards refitting that night; and the confusion and uproar and
numberless abominations of the crowded craft, were irksome to a greater
degree than I expected, after having been accustomed to the strict and
orderly discipline of a man-of-war. The following forenoon the _Torch_
was ordered by signal to chase in the south-east quarter, and, hauling
out from the fleet, she was soon out of sight.

THE MERCHANTMAN AND THE PIRATE

From "Hard Cash," BY CHARLES READE

North Latitude 23 1/2, Longitude East 113; the time March of this same
year; the wind southerly; the port Whampoa in the Canton River. Ships at
anchor reared their tall masts, here and there; and the broad stream was
enlivened and colored by junks and boats of all sizes and vivid hues,
propelled on the screw principle by a great scull at the stern, with
projecting handles for the crew to work; and at times a gorgeous mandarin
boat, with two great glaring eyes set in the bows, came flying, rowed
with forty paddles by an armed crew, whose shields hung on the gunwale
and flashed fire in the sunbeams; the mandarin, in conical and buttoned
hat, sitting on the top of his cabin calmly smoking Paradise, alias
opium, while his gong boomed and his boat flew fourteen miles an hour,
and all things scuttled out of his celestial way. And there, looking
majestically down on all these water ants, the huge _Agra_, cynosure of
so many loving eyes and loving hearts in England, lay at her moorings;
homeward bound.

Her tea not being