At last the time came round for us to leave Goa. The steamers are due once a fortnight, but this one was long past her time. At last we had a telegram to say, "The steamer would pass Goa at midnight." We started in a large open boat in the evening with Mr. Major, his secretary, four men to row and one to steer. We rowed down the river in the evening, and then across the bay for three hours against wind and tide to open sea, bow on to heavy rollers, and at last reached the mouth of the bay, where is the fort. We remained bobbing about in the sea, in the trough of the big waves, for a considerable time. A violent storm of rain, thunder, and lightning came on, and Mr. Major proposed we should put back to the fort, at the entrance of the bay, and take shelter under some arches, which we did. Then we went to sleep, leaving the secretary and the _boatwála_ to watch for the steamer. At 1.30 I was awoke by the sound of a gun booming across the water. I sprang up and roused the others; but the storm was so heavy we could see no lights, and returned to sleep. We ought to have gone off when the gun fired; the ship had been laying to for us for three-quarters of an hour. If the ship went without us, we should have lost our passage to Europe, we should have been caught in the monsoon, we should have had to return another fortnight to Goa, of which we were heartily tired, and knew by heart, only to renew the same a fortnight hence. We were soon under way again, and by-and-by saw the lights of the steamer about three miles off. Knowing the independence of these captains, the monopoly, and the futility of complaints, and seeing that my husband and Mr. Major slept, I began to be very disagreeable with the boat-hook. I got the secretary to stand in the bows and wave a lamp on a pole. I urged the _boatwálas_ with perpetual promises of _bakshish_. Everybody else was leaving it to Kismet. Our kind host had been holloaing at the _boatwálas_ the whole evening because the boat was dirty, and making them bale out the horrid-smelling bilge water, and now we wanted him, he was sound asleep and as good as gold. "Can't you shout?" I cried to him; "they might hear you. You can shout loud enough when nobody wants you to." At last, after an hour's anxiety, we reached the ship, and heavy seas kept washing us away from the ladder. No one had the energy to hold on to the rope, or to take the boat-hook to keep us to her, so at last I did it myself; my husband roaring with laughter at their supineness, and at me making myself so disagreeably officious and energetic. An English sailor threw me a rope. "Thanks," I said, as I took advantage of an enormous wave to spring on to the ladder. "I am the only man in the boat to-night." All came on board with us, and we had a parting stirrup-cup, and said farewell, and often after, our good host and his wife used to write to me, and call me the "only man in the boat."