The Lord has appointed me to that
duty, and I shall carry out my orders. Mons. La Touche, who was preached
about in France as the man that was to extinguish me, and even in
the scurvy English newspapers, but never dared to show his snivelly
countenance outside of the inner buoys, is dead of his debosheries, for
which I am deeply grieved, as I fully intended to send him to the devil.
"'I have been most unlucky for some time now, and to tell the truth I
may say always. But I am the last man in the world to grumble--as you,
my dear Lingo, can testify. I always do the utmost, with a single mind,
and leave the thought of miserable pelf to others, men perhaps who never
saw a shotted cannon fired. You know who made eighty thousand pounds,
without having to wipe his pigtail--dirty things, I am glad they are
gone out--but my business is to pay other people's debts, and receive
all my credits in the shape of cannon-balls. This is always so, and I
should let it pass as usual, except for a blacker trick than I have ever
known before. For fear of giving me a single chance of earning twopence,
they knew that there was a million and a half of money coming into Cadiz
from South America in four Spanish frigates, and instead of leaving me
to catch them, they sent out Graham Moore--you know him very well--with
orders to pocket everything. This will create a war with Spain, a war
begun with robbery on our part, though it must have come soon in any
case.
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