"Short of men, hey?" said he. "So I should suppose, if _he's_ your crew," bursting into a laugh as he indicated the negro boy with a motion of his chin. "How come you to be at sea with no more crew than one little nigger?"
"My crew," said I, "were composed of five English sailors. They were shipped at Cadiz. Yesterday they took the boat, and sailed away to the coast of Spain in her, saying _they_ weren't going to England. Can you lend me a couple of hands?"
"What's the name of this craft?" said he, looking up at the Spanish ensign.
"To Penzance," said I, naming the first port that entered my head.
He asked several further questions of a like sort, and seemed perfectly satisfied with my answers. I invited him to step below and drink a glass of wine, but he declined, saying that his ship was in too great a hurry to get home to allow him to stop and take a friendly glass on the road.
He had not long returned to the Talavera when the boat, in charge of a midshipman, came alongside the schooner again, and a couple of young sailors, each with a sailor's bag upon his shoulder, climbed over the side. The midshipman, looking up, called out to me: "They're a couple of Dutchmen, but the captain guesses they'll serve your turn." I told him to give my hearty thanks to the captain for his kindness. He then went back to his ship, which immediately swung her yards, and in a little while a wide space of water separated the two vessels.
"Dutchman" is a generic word employed by sailors to designate Germans, Swedes, Danes, and others of the northern nationalities. These two Dutchmen proved to be, the one a young Swede, who spoke English very imperfectly, and the other a young Dane, whose knowledge of English was almost wholly restricted to the names of ropes and sails; both of them smart, respectful young fellows, without curiosity, accepting their sudden change of life with the proverbial indifference of the sailor.
I had intended, for the convenience of Miss Noble, to carry the schooner to Whitehaven; but before we gained the parallel of Land's End it came on to blow heavily from the north and west--so heavily, and with such an ugly, menacing look of continuance in the wide, dark, greenish scowl of the sky, that I thought proper to shift my helm for the English Channel. _There_ we encountered terrible weather. I hoped to make some near port, but, owing to the thickness and to the gale that had veered due west, I could do nothing but keep the schooner running until we were off the South Foreland. The weather then moderating, I steered for Ramsgate harbor, and the schooner was safely moored alongside the wall of the East Pier in six days to the hour from the date of our receiving the two seamen from the Talavera.