So long as I kept company with Santron, I never thought of returning to ‘Uncle Pat’; my reckless spendthrift companion had too often avowed the pleasure he would feel in quartering himself on my kind friend, dissipating his hard-earned gains, and squandering the fruits of all his toil. Deterred by such a prospect, I resolved rather never to revisit him than in such company. Now, however, I was again alone, and all my hopes and wishes turned towards him. A few hours’ sail might again bring me beneath his roof, and once more should I find myself at home. The thought was calming to all my excitement; I forgot every danger I had passed through, I lost all memory of every vicissitude I had escaped, and had only the little low parlour in the ‘Black Pits’ before my mind’s eye, the wild, unweeded garden, and the sandy, sunny beach before the door. It was as though all that nigh a year had compassed had never occurred, and that my life at Crown Point and my return to England were only a dream. Sleep overcame me as I thus lay pondering, and when I awoke the sun was glittering in the bright waves of the Mersey, a fresh breeze was flaunting and fluttering the half-loosened sails, and the joyous sounds of seamen’s voices were mingling with the clank of capstans, and the measured stroke of oars. It was full ten minutes after I awoke before I could remember how I came there, and what had befallen me. Poor Santron, where is he now? was my first thought, and it came with all the bitterness of self-reproach. Could I have parted company with him under other circumstances, it would not have grieved me deeply. His mocking, sarcastic spirit, the tone of depreciation which he used towards everything and everybody, had gone far to sour me with the world, and day by day I felt within me the evil influences of his teachings. How different were they from poor Gottfried’s lessons, and the humble habits of those who lived beneath them! Yet I was sorry, deeply sorry, that our separation should have been thus, and almost wished I had stayed to share his fate, whatever it might be. While thus swayed by different impulses, now thinking of my old home at Crown Point, now of Uncle Pat’s thatched cabin, and again of Santron, I strolled down to the wharf, and found myself in a considerable crowd of people, who were all eagerly pressing forward to witness the embarkation of several boatfuls of pressed seamen, who, strongly guarded and ironed, were being conveyed to the _Athol_ tender, a large three-master, about a mile off, down the river. To judge from the cut faces and bandaged heads and arms, the capture had not been effected without resistance. Many of the poor fellows appeared more suited to a hospital than the duties of active service, and several lay with bloodless faces and white lips, the handcuffed wrists seeming a very mockery of a condition so destitute of all chance of resistance.