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Updated: June 18, 2025
When we arrived aboard the English seventy-four, the Captain was received with the usual honours, and the gig's crew were conducted below, and hospitably regaled with some spirits, served out by order of the officer of the deck.
"Come, White-Jacket, rig yourself in white that's the gig's uniform to-day; you are a gig-man, my boy give ye joy!" This was the first announcement of the fact that I heard; but soon after it was officially ratified.
Out go the oars, and the boat is about moving off, when the inhuman mother tosses her pickaninny into the bottom of the canoe, and, reaching her long skinny arm over the gig's stern-sheets, makes a snatch at the coveted scarf! She would have clutched it, had not her hand been struck down on the instant by the blade of an oar wielded by Henry Chester.
In three seconds Her Majesty's brig was under topsails, hove-to alongside her prize. "Mr Rawson," said the captain, addressing me, "there will be some difficulty in boarding that vessel, and I wish that you would go in the gig and take possession of her. She is our first prize, remember, and it would not do to let her slip through our fingers." "Ay, ay, sir. Gig's crew away, then?"
After supper, the gig's crew were called, and we rowed ashore, dressed in our uniform, beached the boat, and went up to the fandango. The bride's father's house was the principal one in the place, with a large court in front, upon which a tent was built, capable of containing several hundred people.
The call was followed by a slight, muffled scurrying of feet, and the gig's crew were seen leaping, light as figures of india-rubber, into the elegantly-moulded craft that hung at the brig's davits, the falls were eased away, and in a moment the boat, light as a bubble, was dancing upon the sparkling blue tumble at the brig's lee gangway.
The skipper having explained to the officers in command of the other boats what he intended to do, and given them instructions how to act in the event of certain contingencies arising, the gig's crew manned their oars, and we pulled away in the direction of the peninsula, which we reached in the course of a few minutes.
The gig's crew required no urging to bend to their oars. They must have been seen, for a whole volley followed them. They were not at first pursued, and it was evident that the French boats were at the inner side of the boom. The shot continued to fall thickly round them, but no one was hit. At last they got beyond the range of fire. "Avast pulling!" cried Lord Claymore.
While here, I often thought of the miserable, gloomy weeks we had spent in this dull place, in the brig; discontent and hard usage on board, and four hands to do all the work on shore. Give me a big ship. There is more room, better outfit, better regulation, more life, and more company. Another thing was better arranged here: we had a regular gig's crew.
The precious basket being at length safely deposited in the gig's stern-sheets, I followed it down the side; the second lieutenant came next, and the skipper bringing up the rear, we hoisted our lug-sail, the sea-breeze blowing strongly up the river, and shoved off; our motions being intently scrutinised by the Yankee skipper as long as we could make him out.
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