From Powder Monkey to Admiral | Page 5

where they were going. Reaching a boat, they were
made to tumble in, some resisting and endeavouring to get away; but a
gentle prick from the point of a cutlass, or a clout on the head, made
them more reasonable, and most of them sat down resigned to their fate.
One of them, however, a stout fellow, when the boat had got some
distance from the shore, striking out right and left at the men nearest
him, sprang overboard, and before the boat could be pulled round had
already got back nearly half-way to the landing-place.
One or two of the press-gang, who had muskets, fired, but they were
not good shots. The man looking back as he saw them lifting their
weapons, by suddenly diving escaped the first volley, and by the time
they had again loaded he had gained such a distance that the shot
spattered into the water on either side of him. They were afraid of firing
again for fear of hitting some of the people on shore, besides which,
darkness coming on, the gloom concealed him from view.

They knew, however, that he must have landed in safety from the
cheers which came from off the quay, uttered by the crowd who had
followed the press-gang, hooting them as they embarked with their
captives.
Bill began to think that he could not be going to a very pleasant place,
since, in spite of the risk he ran, the man had been so eager to escape;
but being himself unable to swim, he could not follow his example,
even had he wished it. He judged it wiser, therefore, to stay still, and
see what would next happen. The boat pulled down the river for some
way, till she got alongside a large cutter, up the side of which Bill and
his companions were made to climb.
From what he heard, he found that she was a man-of-war tender, her
business being to collect men, by hook or by crook, for the Royal
Navy.
As she was now full--indeed, so crowded that no more men could be
stowed on board--she got under way with the first of the ebb, and
dropped down the stream, bound for Spithead.
As Bill, with most of the pressed men, was kept below during this his
first trip to sea, he gained but little nautical experience. He was,
however, very sick, while he arrived at the conclusion that the tender's
hold, the dark prison in which he found himself, was a most horrible
place.
Several of his more heartless companions jeered at him in his misery;
and, indeed, poor Bill, thin and pale, shoeless and hatless, clad in
patched garments, looked a truly miserable object.
As the wind was fair, the voyage did not last long, and glad enough he
was when the cutter got alongside the big frigate, and he with the rest
being ordered on board, he could breathe the fresh air which blew
across her decks.
Tom Fletcher, who stood next to Bill, had considerably the advantage
of him in outward appearance. Tom was dressed in somewhat nautical

fashion, though any sailor would have seen with half an eye that his
costume had been got up by a shore-going tailor.
Tom had a good-natured but not very sensible-looking countenance. He
was strongly built, was in good health, and had the making of a sailor
in him, though this was the first time that he had even been on board a
ship.
He had a short time before come off with a party of men returning on
the expiration of their leave. Telling them that he wished to go to sea,
he had been allowed to enter the boat. From the questions some of them
had put to him, and the answers he gave, they suspected that he was a
runaway, and such in fact was the case. Tom was the son of a solicitor
in a country town, who had several other boys, he being the fourth, in
the family.
He had for some time taken to reading the voyages of Drake,
Cavendish, and Dampier, and the adventures of celebrated pirates, such
as those of Captains Kidd, Lowther, Davis, Teach, as also the lives of
some of England's naval commanders, Sir Cloudesley Shovell, Benbow,
and Admirals Hawke, Keppel, Rodney, and others, whose gallant
actions he fully intended some day to imitate.
He had made vain endeavours to induce his father to let him go to sea,
but Mr Fletcher, knowing that he was utterly ignorant of a sea life, set
his wish down as a mere fancy which it would be folly to indulge.
Tom, instead of trying to show that he really was in earnest, took
French leave one fine morning, and found his way to Portsmouth,
without being traced.