ake
everything ready for an immediate start, promising them to serve out
some liquor if they worked well. This was sufficient, and in little
more than an hour the mast was secured, the rigging all complete, and
the sails ready for bending. I then ordered the boat to be manned, and
telling the officers that they were to bend the sails, and have
everything ready for weighing on my return on board, which would be in
an hour, or thereabouts, I pulled on shore, and went up to the owner's,
taking four men with me, and leaving three men in the boat. I ordered
these three men to remain till the others came down with my trunks and
effects, and not, to leave the boat on any consideration.

When I arrived at the owner's, I told him what I had done, and he
commended my arrangements. In the back room I found four gentlemen
dressed in seamen's clothing, and as there was no time to be lost, they
immediately shouldered the trunks and valises; desiring my own men to
remain with the owner to bring down anything that he might wish to send
on board, I left them in the counting-house. The gentlemen followed me
with their loads down to the boat, and when I got there the men told me
that some people had come down and asked whose boat it was, and why they
were lying there, and that they had told the people that the captain had
taken four men with him to bring down his things, and that they were
waiting for him; so it was lucky that I said to my men what I did.

We hastened to put the trunks into the boat, and to get in ourselves
after we had received this intelligence, and then I shoved off from the
wharf, and laid about a stone's throw distant for my other men. At last
we heard them coming down, and shortly afterwards we perceived that they
were stopped by other people, and in altercation with them. I knew then
that the officers were on the alert, and would discover the stratagem,
and therefore desired my men and the gentlemen, who had each taken an
oar in readiness, to give way and pull for the schooner. As we did so,
the king's officers on search who had stopped my four men came down to
the wharf and ordered us to come back, but we made no reply. As soon as
we were alongside, we hoisted the things out of the boat, veered her
astern by a tow-rope, slipped the cable, and made sail. Fortunately it
was very dark, and we were very alert in our movements. We could
perceive lights at the wharf as we sailed out of the river, and it was