"I have an urgent message for your captain, which none must know but he," gasped Borthwick, in a half-strangled voice; "look at me, sirs--some of you must have seen me on board before now?" "Tarry a minute, gunner Dick," said a soldier who was in half mail, and had but one eye; "I _have_ seen this man before, methinks." "Off Taymouth--at night," said Borthwick. "I remember me now," said the soldier, who was Anthony Arblaster; "unhand him, Dick, ere worse come of it, for the captain's temper hath been truly devilish of late." "We have had a long spell on this here shore," growled the gunner, as he released the throat of Borthwick, whose lace doublet was no way improved by the application of such a hard and tarry hand as Dick's; "we have turned our best barge into a bumboat, as ye may see, so come aboard and let us shove off, before some of your furious Scots come after their flour-sacks. I would to St. George they were all, for the trouble they give us, steering in the latitude of purgatory!" "Or a warmer latitude still," added Anthony Arblaster, rubbing his blind eye. "Avast," said an old sailor, "and remember there is a Scot here, and that he be but one among many." But the said Scot, though boiling with rage at his treatment, cared little for national reflections; yet, had these honest English hearts known the actual character of the wretch they had on board, they would have flung him into the sea, lest they should never more have fortune on its waters. "Ship your oars, my hearts," said the gunner; "and harkee, Arblaster, bear a-hand, old dead-eye, and belay these here quadrupeds to the thwarts, or we may lose them in the surf." The boat was bluffly built, and being full of men, and moreover heavily laden, she laboured through the breakers which roll for ever on those sands, and shipped a great quantity of spray before her head was fairly turned towards the _Harry_, which was astern of all the other vessels, all of which were lying with their heads towards the river. The uneasiness manifested by Borthwick, as the spray flew over his rich cloak and doublet, afforded extreme gratification to the hardy seamen who had nothing to spoil, and whose oars bent almost to breaking, as they strained between the tholing-pins, and shot the heavy barge from one long roller to another. After they had pulled a mile from the shore, and saw the Castle of Dunbar rising with all its strong red towers and crenellated ramparts in many a frowning row, bristling with cannon and black loop-holes, the one-eyed archer, who was seated in the stern, uttered a shout of astonishment:-- "Hilloah, old Buff," said the gunner; "what is the matter?" "There are two large ships standing down the river!"