Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/287

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THE NAVAL OFFICER.
281

his deliverance. He then fell on my neck, embraced me, kissed my cheek, and wept like a girl. The sailors, meanwhile, who never bear malice long, good-naturedly jumped up, and assisted him in getting his little articles into the boat; and as Mungo followed his master, shook hands with him all round, and swore he should be a black prince when he went back to Guinea. We also took in one or two more little articles of general use, which had been forgotten in our former hurry.

We now shoved off for the last time; and had not proceeded more than two hundred yards from the ship, when she gave a heavy lurch on one side, recovered it, and rolled as deep on the other; then, as if endued with life and instinct, gave a pitch, and went down, head foremost, into the fathomless deep. We had scarcely time to behold this awful scene, when the wind again sprang up fair, from its old quarter, the east.

"There," said I, "Heaven has declared