"I tell you that I am ready to accept all risks. But if you want me to return with my friends in the cutter, you must summon your crew to pitch me down the ladder. And there's the end on't."
"Dear, dear! Tell me at least, sir, that you are an unmarried man."
"Up to now I have that misfortune. I aimed a bow at Mistress Susannah; but that lady had turned her broad shoulders and it missed fire. Which reminds me," I continued, "to ask for the favour of pen, ink and paper. I wish to send a letter ashore to the mail."
She invited me to follow her; and I descended to the main cabin, a spick-and-span apartment, where we surprised two passably good-looking damsels at their house-work, the one polishing a mahogany swing-table, the other a brass door-handle. They picked up their cloths, dropped me a curtsey apiece, and disappeared at a word from Susannah, who bade me be seated at the swing-table and set writing materials before me. The room was lit by a broad stern window, and lined along two of its sides with mahogany doors leading, as I supposed, to sleeping cabins; the panels—not to speak of the brass handles and finger-plates—shining so that a man might have seen his face in them to shave by, "But why all these women on board a privateer?" thought I, as I tried a quill on my thumb-nail and embarked upon my first love-letter.
"Dearest:
"This line with my devotion to tell you that the balloon has descended safely, and your Anne finds himself on board"
"By the way. Miss Susannah, what is the name of this ship?"
"She is called the Lady Nepean, and I am a married woman and the mother of six."
