Bob also pointed out the spot where nearly a century before the _Edgar_ had blown up, and every soul in her had perished, and also where the _Royal George_ and the brave Admiral Kempenfeldt, with eight hundred men, had gone down several years before the destruction of the _Boyne_. "Ay, sir, to my mind it's sad to think that the sea should swallow up so many fine fellows as she does every year, and yet we couldn't very well do without her, so I suppose it's all right. Mind your head-sheets, Jerry, or she'll not come about in this bobble," he observed, as we were about to tack round the buoy. Having kept well to the eastward, we were now laying up to windward of the fleet. There were line-of-battle ships, and frigates, and corvettes, and huge Indiamen as big-looking as many line-of-battle ships, and large transports, and numberless merchantmen--ships and barques, and brigs and schooners; but as to what the _Barbara_ was like I had not an idea. I fixed on one of the largest of the Indiamen, but when I told old Bob the tonnage of the _Barbara_ he laughed, and said she wasn't half the size of the ship I pointed out. It was getting darkish and coming on to blow pretty fresh, and how to find my ship among the hundred or more at anchor I could not possibly tell. "Well, I thought from your look and the way you hailed me that you was a sea-faring gentleman, and on course you'd ha' known your own ship," said old Bob, with a wink of his one eye. "Howsomever, we can beat about among the fleet till it's dark, and then back to Portsmouth; and then, do ye see, sir, we can come out to-morrow morning by daylight and try again. Maybe we shall have better luck. The convoy is sure not to sail in the night, and the tide won't serve till ten o'clock at earliest." "This comes of dressing in nautical style, and assuming airs foreign to me," I thought to myself, though I could not help fancying that there was some quiet irony in the old man's tone. His plan did not at all suit my notions. I was already beginning to feel very uncomfortable, bobbing and tossing about among the ships; and I expected to be completely upset, unless I could speedily put my foot on something more stable than the cockleshell, or rather bean-pod, of a boat in which I sat. I began to be conscious, indeed, that I must be looking like anything but "a sea-faring gentleman." "But we _must_ find her," I exclaimed, with some little impetuosity; "it will never do to be going back, and I know she's here."