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[Illustration: "GRATITUDE, MY LORD, TO YOU," HE REPLIED.]
Author of "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," "The Orange Girl," Etc.
New York . Dodd, Mead and Company . . . 1901
XXXVII. THE BUBBLE AND THE SKY ROCKET 306
XLI. THE FIRST AND THE SECOND CONFEDERATE 345
XLII. THE THIRD AND THE FOURTH CONFEDERATE 355
XLIII. THE FIFTH AND LAST CONFEDERATE 361
The happiest day of my life, up to that time, because I should be the basest and the most ungrateful of men were I not to confess that I have since enjoyed many days far excelling in happiness that day, was the 20th day of June, in the year of grace, seventeen hundred and forty-seven.
For on that day, being my nineteenth birthday, I was promoted, though so young, to be mate, or chief officer, on board my ship, _The Lady of Lynn_, Captain Jaggard, then engaged in the Lisbon trade.
In the forenoon of that day I was on board and on duty. We were taking in our cargo. Barges and lighters were alongside and all the crew with the barges were hoisting and heaving and lowering and stowing with a grand yohoing and chanting, such as is common, with oaths innumerable, in the lading and the unlading of a ship. It was my duty to see the casks and crates hoisted aboard and lowered into the hold. The supercargo and the clerk from the counting-house sat at a table on deck and entered in their books every cask, box, chest, or bale. We took aboard and carried away for the use of the Portugals or any whom it might concern, turpentine, tar, resin, wool, pig iron and other commodities brought by our ships from the Baltic or carried in barges down the river to the port of Lynn. These were the things which we took out--what we brought home was wine; nothing but wine; barrels, tuns, pipes, hogsheads, casks of all kinds, containing wine. There would be in our hold wine of Malmsey, Madeira, Teneriffe, Canary, Alicante, Xeres, Oporto, Bucellas and Lisbon; all the wines of Spain and Portugal; the sweet strong wines to which our people are most inclined, especially our people of Norfolk, Marshland, Fenland, Lincoln and the parts around. Thanks to the port of Lynn and to the ships of Lynn engaged in the Lisbon trade, there is no place in England where this sweet strong wine can be procured better or at a more reasonable rate. This wine is truly beloved of all classes: it is the joy of the foxhunter after the day's run: of the justices after the ordinary on market day: of the fellows in their dull old colleges at Cambridge: of the dean and chapter in the sleepy cathedral close: of the country clergy and the country gentry--yea, and of the ladies when they visit each other. I say nothing in dispraise of Rhenish and of Bordeaux, but give me the wine that comes home in the bottoms that sail to and from Lisbon. All wine is good but that is best which warms the heart and strengthens the body and renews the courage--the wine of Spain and Portugal.