the African strand, with Parfitt and Wilson yelling out contradictory orders, and Punch bawling to his men to obey him and nobody else.
Just before daylight the weather cleared; dawn disclosed the high coast along our starboard beam, and I gathered from the tempestuous discourse of the three captains that we had gone ashore somewhere near Cape Hanglip and Sandown Bay, proving that though Captain Parfitt's calculations had come nearest the truth, all three men had been heavily out in their reckoning.
Scarcely had the sun risen when a gunboat hove in sight, bound from the eastwards to Simon's Town. She sighted our ship ashore, and sent boats. I was heartily glad to get aboard of her. Captain Parfitt and five of the crew also went aboard; but old Punch declined to leave the neighbourhood of the vessel. He said that there was no immediate danger, that he would go ashore, and make shift under canvas until assistance should be sent from Capetown. Wilson remained with him.
The ship was ultimately got off, and navigated to England by Wilson with Captain Punch in the cabin; but by that time I had received my luggage from the hold of the Biddy McDougal, had transferred it to another vessel, and was abreast of Ascension on my way to England.
I find something heroic in the fancy of Punch's gout-ridden shape camping it out abreast of the stranded vessel, whose situation he wholly though improperly attributed to Parfitt's ignorance as a navigator. So far as passengers are concerned, perhaps there is no great matter of a moral to be gathered from this brief narrative; yet, even in these advanced seafaring times, ships may be found at sea with more than one commander, though one only has any claim to the title. Will any shipmaster tell me that amongst his passengers he does not occasionally meet with a nautical man—sometimes a yachtsman, and sometimes a naval officer—who has the highest possible opinion of his own judgment, and who will lose no opportunity of giving his opinion, and vexing the soul of the legitimate skipper by impertinent criticism, by offers of help, and by downright counsel? "Intending" passengers will do well sometimes, perhaps, to inquire before embarking how many captains are going in charge of the ship.
