By the time we had arrived at that part of the beach where lay the boat--a large cutter, watched by a couple of seamen armed with cutlasses and pistols--my mind had in some measure calmed down. The degradation of being collared and man-handled was indeed maddening and heart-subduing; but then I was beginning to think this--that first of all it was very probable I must have lost my ship, press-gang or no press-gang, seeing that I could not get a boat to put me aboard her; next, that my being kidnaped, as I call it, would find me such a reason for my absence as Captain Spalding and the owners of the vessel must certainly allow to be unanswerable. Then, again, I was perfectly sure of being released and sent ashore when I had represented my condition to the captain or lieutenant of the frigate; and I might also calculate upon old Tom Martin communicating with my uncle, who would, early in the day, come off to the frigate and confirm my story. These reflections, I say, calmed me considerably, though my mind continued very much troubled and all awork within me, for I could not forget the horrible picture of the gibbet and the prodigious flash of fire which had delivered the dead hanging son to his wretched mother; and I was likewise much haunted and worried by the thought of the poor woman sitting upon the sand under the gibbet, fondling the loathsome body and whispering to it, and often looking over the billowy waste of glimmering sand, that would now be whitened by the moon, in the direction I had taken, expecting, perhaps, that I should return or send some human soul to help her bury the corpse, that it might not be hooked up again. The Downs were now full of life. There was a pleasant fresh breeze blowing from the southward, and the water came whitening and feathering in strong ripples to the shingle. The moon was riding over the sea south of the southernmost limit of the Goodwin Sands. She was making some light in the air, though but a piece of moon, and a short length of her silver greenish reflection trembled under her. Almost all the vessels had got under weigh and were standing in groups of dark smudges east or west. It was impossible to tell which might be the _Royal Brunswicker_, but I could see no craft answering to her size in that part near the frigate where she had brought up. When we were come to the cutter we three pressed men were ordered to get into her. I quietly entered, and so did one of of the other two, but the third--the man who had cursed and raged as he had walked along--flung himself down upon the shingle. “What you can’t carry you may drag,” he exclaimed, and he swore horribly at the men. “In with the scoundrel!” said the lieutenant.