Once, too, when there was some
grumbling and talk of a mutiny over the state of the provisions, he was
of opinion that they should not wait for the dogs to rise, but that they
should march forward and set upon them until they had trounced the
devilment out of them. "Give me a knife and a bucket!" he cried with an
oath, and could hardly be withheld from setting forth alone to deal with
the spokesman of the seamen.
Captain Scarrow had to remind him that though he might be only
answerable to himself at St. Kitt's, killing became murder upon the high
seas. In politics he was, as became his official position, a stout prop
of the House of Hanover, and he swore in his cups that he had never met
a Jacobite without pistolling him where he stood. Yet for all his
vapouring and his violence he was so good a companion, with such a
stream of strange anecdote and reminiscence, that Scarrow and Morgan had
never known a voyage pass so pleasantly.
And then at length came the last day, when, after passing the island,
they had struck land again at the high white cliffs at Beachy Head. As
evening fell the ship lay rolling in an oily calm, a league off from
Winchelsea, with the long, dark snout of Dungeness jutting out in front
of her. Next morning they would pick up their pilot at the Foreland,
and Sir Charles might meet the King's ministers at Westminster before
the evening.
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