Here Nemesis overtook me. About the last man I should have expected to find there was Captain Baynton. According to all canons of civilisation he ought to have been comfortably spending his evening in his house at the head of the Bay, engaged in that gracious hospitality for which he was famous, but it seems he had by some means got wind of my intention to cross the bar in the dark and had come down determined to stop it. He opened the conversation by saying that as the General was to sail at daylight, he thought he himself would sleep on board the _Union_, so as to make his farewell easier than coming to the Point so early. Vainly did I explain that the bar was easy and safe; there was the old grim look and stony glare. “Yes, you go and stick the General on the bar, and a fine d---- fool I shall look. You don’t start before daylight.” And neither did we. On that particular passage I had with me amongst others as passenger the Rev. E. L. Berthon, the inventor of the boats bearing his name. He was a remarkable man in many ways. For one thing, though he was sixty-nine years of age, he was as active as a cat, and was greatly distressed because on an occasion of boat drill at sea, just to show him the time it would take to pick up a lifebuoy, I would not let him be lowered in the Clifford boat, the ship running a good thirteen before a fresh breeze. I mention this incident, for the evolution was performed on the spur of the moment during a conversation with him, and on referring to a letter to Captain Dixon as to the efficiency on the ship, I find that the boat with the lifebuoy was being hooked on in five and a half minutes. In his book entitled _A Retrospect of Eight Decades_, Mr. Berthon mentions the days spent by him on board the _African_, but was not complimentary concerning the crew. I wrote to him on the subject and received a letter in reply in which he stated that I had myself addressed them collectively as a pack of cab-drivers, but I submit that a man may take liberties with his own which other people have no right to do.