week dismantling the ship
and returning stores, etc. On the second day I ran up to London and saw my
mother. She did not, luckily for both parties, shed a flood of tears, but
received me with maternal affection, though she said she scarcely knew
me--I was grown, as my sister was pleased to say, such a black man. On the
sixth day after our anchoring I ordered the ship to be put out of
commission, and the cook hauled down the pendant. We had a parting dinner
at the "Gun" Inn, shook hands and separated.

CHAPTER XIV.

A HOLIDAY ASHORE.

On shore--Tired of inactivity--Apply for a ship--Appointed to H.M.S.
_Minotaur_ (74)--Prisoners sent on board as part of crew--Go to
Plymouth--Scarcity of seamen--Ruse to impress an Irish farm
labourer--Ordered to join the Channel fleet off Ushant--Capture
French thirty-six-gun ship--In danger off Ushant--Capture two small
French ships and one Dutch one: author sent to Plymouth in charge
of the latter--Placed in quarantine.

After I had remained in noisy, bustling, crowded and disagreeable London a
month, my mother wishing to go into Surrey, I was glad of the opportunity
to accompany her and to breathe purer air, and left town without regret.

I was now under my own orders, and was much puzzled to find out how I was
to obey myself. For the last ten years I had been under the control of
superiors. Now I had the whole of my crew within myself, and discipline I
found was necessary. I knew no more of England than it knew of me. Men and
manners were equally strange to me, except those on board the different
men-of-war I had served in, and they were not the most polished. In the
society of the fair sex I was exceedingly shy, and my feelings were
sometimes painful when I had to run the gauntlet through rows of
well-dressed women, some looking as demure as a noddy at the masthead. I
was now in my twenty-third year, and an agreeable--nay, an old lady, whose
word was considered sacred--declared I was a charming young man. My life
passed as monotonously as that of a clock in an old maid's sitting-room.
My habits were too active to remain long in this state of listlessness. I
was almost idle enough to make love, and nearly lost my heart seven times.
Caring little for the society of the men, I generally strolled over two or
three fields to read my books, or to scribble sonnets