ded with people, not only
her own seamen and marines, but some hundreds of visitors, women and
children! some of them the honest wives of the men, but others drunken,
swearing, loud-talking creatures--a disgrace to their sex. Quarrelling
and fighting and the wildest uproar were taking place; and then there
were a number of Jews with pinchbeck watches, and all sorts of trumpery
wares, which they were eager to exchange for poor Jack's golden guineas.
Some of them went away in the evening, but many more came back the next
morning to drive their trade, and would have come as long as coin was to
be picked up.

I am not likely to forget that next morning, the 28th of August. It was
a fine summer's morning, and there was just a little sea on, with a
strongish breeze blowing from the eastward, but not enough to prevent
boats coming off from Portsmouth. I counted forty sail-of-the-line, a
dozen frigates and smaller ships of war, and well-nigh three hundred
merchant vessels, riding, as of course we were, to the flood with our
heads towards Cowes.

You will understand that under the lower-deck was fitted a cistern, into
which the sea-water was received and then pumped up by a hand pump,
fixed in the middle of the gun-deck, for the purpose of washing the two
lower gun-decks; the water was let into this cistern by a pipe which
passed through the ship's side, and which was secured by a stop-cock, on
the inside. It had been found the morning before that this water-cock,
which was about three feet below the water line, was out of order and
must be repaired.

The foreman came off from the dockyard, and said that it was necessary
to careen the ship over to port sufficiently to raise the mouth of the
pipe, which went through the ship's timbers below, clean out of the
water, that he and his men might work at it. Between seven and eight
o'clock the order was given to run the larboard guns out as far as they
could go, the larboard ports being opened. The starboard guns were also
run in amidships and secured by tackles, the moving over of this great
weight of metal bringing the larboard lower-deck port-cills just level
with the water. The men were then able to get at the mouth of the pipe.
For an hour the ship remained in this position, while the carpenters
were at work. We had been taking in ruin and shot in the previous day,
and now a sloop called the _Lark_, which belonged to three brothers,
came alongside with the last cargo of