Our talk had been of love and courtship, and after making me
a present of several tips, invented by himself, and considered
invaluable by his friends, he related this story of the courtship of a
chum of his as illustrating the great lengths to which young bloods were
prepared to go in his days to attain their ends.
It was a fine clear day in June when Hezekiah Lewis, captain and part
owner of the schooner Thames, bound from London to Aberdeen, anchored
off the little out-of-the-way town of Orford in Suffolk. Among other
antiquities, the town possessed Hezekiah's widowed mother, and when
there was no very great hurry--the world went slower in those days--the
dutiful son used to go ashore in the ship's boat, and after a filial tap
at his mother's window, which often startled the old woman considerably,
pass on his way to see a young lady to whom he had already proposed five
times without effect.
The mate and crew of the schooner, seven all told, drew up in a little
knot as the skipper, in his shore-going clothes, appeared on deck, and
regarded him with an air of grinning, mysterious interest.
"Now you all know what you have got to do?" queried the skipper.
"Ay, ay," replied the crew, grinning still more deeply.
Hezekiah regarded them closely, and then ordering the boat to be
lowered, scrambled over the side, and was pulled swiftly towards the
shore.
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