From us Fortune is flying; and we are now in pursuit. The sequel will shew how perverse a jade she is, and how determined not to be overtaken. On the first of July, 1799, we went on board the Kennet, Captain Thomson. All was confusion, all hurry. Barges, loaded with prodigious bales, lay beside her; a dozen men were straining every nerve to raise them over her side, and stow them between her ribs. It excited attention and surprise to see these cumbrous packs wedged with such contrivance as scarcely to leave a vacancy. Every thing that suppleness of limb, thews, sinews and muscular force could effect, was in continual exertion. The vessel was to fall down the river the next tide; which seemed incompatible with the labour to be performed. With what additional wonder do I recollect scenes like these in my native country, having compared them with the inattention I since have witnessed. Here every man was active and intelligent; and one even supremely above the rest. Indeed it was prodigious. He was the mate; he directed the whole; his eye was every where; and his arm seemed to work miracles. He was full six feet high; and when the ponderous load seemed to defy their collected strength, he came, applied his giant force, and, at the first pull, it began to move. His agility was no less surprising, and almost irreconcilable to such bulk; for his wrist would doubly measure that of an ordinary man. His understanding was equal to his bodily power; he instantly saw what was wrong, and the way in which it was to be rectified. Give but his faculties another circle of action, and an epic poet might have made this man his hero: yet he was but the mate of a ship, subject to a captain who, though no fool, was far indeed from his equal; and when I asked him if he did not mean to be a captain himself, answered with a sigh—‘I wish, Sir, I may ever have so much good fortune.’ In what a traverse and frequently ludicrous manner does accident arrange the place and office of man, and the affairs of this poor world! The mate’s name was Baird; and he and his commander were both Scotchmen. In the invoice, he was written captain, and the captain supercargo; a falsehood to which the infamous practice of pressing has given birth; a mate, like a foremast man, being liable to be pressed. When I came on board, and saw the work that was still to do, I concluded it was impossible it should be accomplished. The mate himself doubted, but hoped, and worked like legion. Yes; we were at Gravesend the next day, where we were examined at the Alien Office; and on the evening of the third, anchored at the Nore.