boat again, when Lord Frederick's own signature met my eye at the bottom of the paper, addressed below to "Lieutenant Collins, of his Majesty's schooner Aniceta, _at sea_." A wonderfully mysterious squint from Snelling, behind the officer, was sufficient to clinch the matter in my own mind, showing that the reefer was as sharp as a needle: and I handed back the document to the harbour gentleman, with a "Very well, sir, that will do." "I suppose I'd better have my men up, Lieutenant Collins?" said he, with a quick pert kind of accent, which made me set him down at once for a Londoner, while at the same time he seemed impatient, as I thought, to get the management. "Why, sir," said I, "I suppose you had." Hereupon up mounted four or five decent enough looking _stevedores_[7]--one or two of whom had rather the air of sailors, the rest being broad-beamed, short-legged Dutchmen, with trousers like pillow-slips--followed by a whole string of fourteen or fifteen Indian Lascars, their bundles in their hands, and an ugly old _serdug_ at their head; while the lame, broken-down, debauched-like fellow of a man-o'-warsman, that Snelling had found sitting on a timberhead ashore, got aboard with our own boat's crew. Our gangway was chokeful, to my fresh dismay, for to get rid of such a tagrag-and-bobtail, in case of running to sea, was impossible; even if they weren't odds against us, here was it likely to get a thick night, the swell growing under the schooner till she began to yerk at her anchor, head to wind, like a young filly at a manger; so that dropping them back into their boat when needful, as I intended at first, was out of the question for the present. I found from the harbour officer that the number of hands would all be required with the morning tide, when his orders were to have the schooner towed in opposite the Battery Dock, especially as there was much chance of the wind blowing strong from seaward next day. The swell on the water, he said, was such that, after putting off, he thought of going back again till the tide began to turn; if he had not been encouraged to stick to it and keep on by the midshipman, whom he fell in with near the quay. This piece of news was the finish to the rage I felt brewing in me, vexed as I naturally was to give up the notion of a free cruise, in command of a craft like the schooner; and, as soon as Mr Webb was comfortable in the cabin, over a tumbler of stiff grog and some cold beef, I sent for Snelling to my own cupboard of a state-room. [7] Men employed in the stowing of ships' cargoes.