On a dark night in December--stormy as that eve on which Leander swam for the last time across the broad Hellespont--a small lugger manfully breasting the billows ran ashore near Musselburgh. There was a high north-easter, driving sleet and snow before it, and raising a heavy surf, through which old Bill skilfully ran his craft ashore on the sandy, seaweedy, mussel-beds, whence the burgh takes its name. "Have a care, you scurvy old devil," cried the Captain, as a huge sea broke over the side of the boat, and christened him with its salt spray--"Easy there--where is your seamanship gone? Egad, I'm drenched like a water rat." "When you've sailed as far as me--you won't swear at a bit dusting like that--you are but a land-lubber after all!" "Stow your venom, you old dogfish, and give us a dram. Ah! here comes another sea over these accursed sands! Ho! well done, Bill; she wore off like a gull: jump out, Ned, never mind wetting your boots. Easy, ho! down with the sail, here we go--ashore at last." So saying he leaped into the water up to his knees after L'Estrange, and these two on one side, with old Bill and a German boy on the other, shoved up the smack high and dry. "Well, let those like the sea who do--terra firma for me," cried the Captain, shaking the sea-water off his waterproof cloak. "'The white waves heaving high' be d--d! such a pitching and lurching as we've had--I am right glad to stand on something solid, arn't you, old fellow?" "I am indeed--and glad to stretch my limbs--so miserably cooped up this last five hours! what an age it is since I last trod these sands! Oh! could I see how this will turn out!" "Where do you steer for now, and where am I to moor myself? Leastways, not here, if I knows it! for it is rascally cold--we'd best run down after a boosing ken." "You are for swilling, no doubt, Bill--you drunken old satyr--always up to filling your barrel-shaped body with liquor! but look you, Bill, we haven't come all this way to lush. I must be off to the Towers. Blow this climate, it's always sleeting and raining in this rotten hole! You and I, L'Estrange, will go and meet Archy, he will have the nags ready; and you, old sot, you may go and be d--d, or swig, or what you like, only be here by the time tide is full, and leave Hans (the boy) to watch over the boat. Give him some grog--for it is infernally cold! Come, Ned." The Captain and L'Estrange walked off and left old Bill to find a pump, whilst the unfortunate foreigner was left to watch in the sleet and wind which blew most chillily over the Links. "This is a regular wild goose chase," said the Captain, as he and his friend struck out for a small village called Fisherrow, a bleak hamlet between Musselburgh and Portobello, where Archy was to be in waiting with horses; "and I only do it as a last hope--you must make up your mind for a failure--and then remember you are never to speak of the wench again--that was the promise."