ent motion, as if his
skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the imperfect light a huge
tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the neighbouring jungle, in the
act of boarding the boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a
loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or
_foot-spars_, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold
of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the
creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a
tremendous snarl, and he saw it no more. On another occasion, he was one
of three men sent with despatches to some Indian port in a boat, which,
oversetting in the open sea in a squall, left them for the greater part
of three days only its upturned bottom for their resting-place. And so
thickly during that time did the sharks congregate around them, that
though a keg of rum, part of the boat's stores, floated for the first
two days within a few yards of them, and they had neither meat nor
drink, none of them, though they all swam well, dared attempt regaining
it. They were at length relieved by a Spanish vessel, and treated with
such kindness, that the subject of my narrative used ever after to speak
well of the Spaniards, as a generous people, destined ultimately to
rise. He was at one time so reduced by scurvy, in a vessel half of whose
crew had been carried off by the disease, that, though still able to do
duty on the tops, the pressure of his finger left for several seconds a
dent in his thigh, as if the muscular flesh had become of the
consistency of dough. At another time, when overtaken in a small vessel
by a protracted tempest, in which "for many days neither sun nor moon
appeared," he continued to retain his hold of the helm for twelve hours
after every other man aboard was utterly prostrated and down, and
succeeded, in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And
after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who had served his
apprenticeship under him, was treated with great kindness on the Spanish
Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had
saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at
imminent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when, in
circumstances of similar exhaustion, they were drifting full upon an
iron-bound shore. Many of my other recollections of this manly sailor
are equally fragmentary in their character; but there is a