Captain Samuel Vincent gave me a reception warm indeed, but not in the way of kindness.  After making me repeat my name, he asked me under what captain I had served as a midshipman, and when I said that I had never been a midshipman, and was proceeding to explain the manner of my appointment he cut me short.

“Not a midshipman!” he cried, running together all three syllables of the word.  “You bin to school, I s’pose?”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, “at Shrewsbury.”

“Now hark to me,” he cries, again interrupting me.  “I never went to no school, and I hain’t got no philosophies nor any other useless cargoes in my hold, nor Mr. Benbow neither; and if ever you say a word against Mr. Benbow you’ll wish you wasn’t Humphrey, nor Bold, ’cos you’ll wish as how you’d never bin born.  I bid you good mornin’.”

I left him, in a fine heat of resentment, thinking that a few years at Shrewsbury school might have improved both his language and his manners.  But when I came to know him better, and to understand the motive of his rough address to me, I forgave the bluff seaman heartily.  He was a keen partisan in the feud that then divided the navy, the one faction being for Benbow, the other against him; and being ignorant of my antecedents, he supposed from my not having been a midshipman that I was one of the fine gentlemen who were foisted on the King’s service by their high connections and despised plain seamen of the Benbow school.  I might have undeceived him very soon had I so pleased, but I thought it best to win his approval by the manner in which I performed my duties, leaving the other matter to time.  As it happened, my fidelity to Mr. Benbow was shown very clearly before long.

’Twould be a dull story to relate the trivial incidents of my first year of service in the navy.  I spent five months at sea, and seven on shore, and Captain Vincent being a martinet.  I had to work hard for my pay of four shillings a day (on shore it was cut down to two shillings).  My diligence in studying navigation pleased him; and when a little affair in which I had been concerned came to his ears, he took me, in a sense, to his heart.

I had gone one day with Lieutenant Venables, of our ship, into a coffee house in Portsmouth, whither the officers of the fleet much resorted.  The first man I set eyes on was Dick Cludde, who was, as I learned afterwards, a lieutenant of the Defiance, which had lately come into port.  With him was his captain (’twas the Captain Kirkby I had seen in the inn at Harley), also Captain Cooper Wade, of the Greenwich, Captain Hudson of the Pendennis, and a number of junior officers.

Cludde greeted me with a puzzled stare; ’twas clear he had not heard of the change in my fortunes, and maybe believed me to be still scouring the cook’s slush pans aboard the Dolphin privateer.  I saw him turn to Lieutenant Simpson, of the Pendennis, who knew me, and guessed by the quick glance Simpson gave me that Cludde had asked him concerning my appearance there.