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Updated: June 15, 2025
After canvassing the matter thoroughly with several old quarter-masters and other dignified sea-fencibles, Jack, hat in hand, made his appearance, one fine evening, at the mast, and, waiting till Captain Claret drew nigh, bowed, and addressed him in his own off-hand, polished, and poetical style.
Having learned that they were six leagues from the said Dreux, I set out last Monday, the 12th of this month, and went and took up my quarters at the town of Nonancourt, which was three leagues from them, for to cross the river there. On Tuesday, I went and took the quarters which they meant to have for themselves, and where their quarter-masters had already arrived.
Thus we attempted to force our way through them, but I had a very narrow escape even in this instance. A woman seized me by the arm, and pulled me towards her; had it not been for one of the quarter-masters I should have been separated from my party; but, just as they dragged me away, she caught hold of me by the leg, and stopped them.
The two divisions of his army were accompanied on their return to Susa by Beton and Diognetus, who seem to have united the character and duties of soldiers and men of science; or, perhaps, were like the quarter-masters- general of our armies.
We might wait until the river opened, and go as far as Albany in a sloop, of which one or two left town each week when business was active, as it was certain to be in the spring of the year, It was thought, however, that the army would require mos' of the means of transportation of this nature that offered; and it might put us to both inconvenience and delay, to wait on the tardy movements of quarter-masters and contractors.
"Damn you!" raged Mad Jack to the quarter-masters; "hard down hard down, I say, and be damned to you!" Contrary orders! but Mad Jack's were obeyed. His object was to throw the ship into the wind, so as the better to admit of close-reefing the top-sails. But though the halyards were let go, it was impossible to clew down the yards, owing to the enormous horizontal strain on the canvas.
So enraged were our people with these orders, that one of the quarter-masters, John Aynsley, came aft, and in the name of the ship's company, begged that they might heave the delegates overboard.
I was always in evidence in my best uniform to give information as though I had been a Cook's tourists' interpreter, while our quarter-masters reaped a harvest of small change from personally conducted parties.
The glass a very powerful one and a favourite instrument with the murdered captain was handed him by one of the quarter-masters, and he applied it to his eye. A breathless silence now prevailed fore and aft for the stranger had all the look of a British man-of-war, and everybody was waiting to hear what Farmer's verdict would be. The inspection was a long-sustained and evidently anxious one.
The man pulled off his clothes, and walked up to the grating. The quarter-masters seized him up. "Seized up, sir," reported the scoundrel of a sergeant of marines, who acted as the captain's spy. The captain looked for the articles of war to read, as is necessary previous to punishing a man, and was a little puzzled to find one, where no positive offence had been committed.
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