Sure enough a ship was meeting us, heading up on the larboard tack about west-north-west, as she stretched in towards the English coast.  I can see that vessel, in my mind’s eye, even at this distant day!  She had two reefs in her top-sails, with spanker, jib, and both courses set, like a craft that carried convenient, rather than urgent canvass.  Her line of sailing would take her about two hundred yards to leeward of us, and my first impulse was to luff.  A second glance showed us she was an English frigate, and we doused our lugg as soon as possible.  Our hearts were in our mouths for the next five minutes.  My eye never turned from that frigate, as she hove by us, now rising on the summit of a sea, now falling gracefully into the trough, concealing everything but her spars from sight.  Glad enough were we, when she had got so far ahead as to bring us well on her weather-quarter, though we did not dare set our sail again, until her dark, glistening hull, with its line of frowning ports, was shut up in the cloud of mist, leaving the spot on the ocean where she had last been seen, as if she were not.  That was one of those hair-breadth escapes that often occur to men engaged in hazardous undertakings, without any direct agency of their own.

Our next adventure was of a more pleasing character.  A good-sized ship was made astern, coming up channel before the wind, and carrying top-mast studding-sails.  She was an American!  On this point we were all agreed, and placing ourselves in her track, we ran off, on her course, knowing that she must be going quite two feet to our one.  In twenty minutes she passed close to us, her officers and crew manifesting the greatest curiosity to learn who and what we were.  So dexterously did Marble manage the boat, that we got a rope, and hauled alongside without lessening the ship’s way, though she nearly towed us under water in the attempt.  The moment we could, we leaped on deck, abandoning the boat to its fate.

We had not mistaken the character of the vessel.  It was a ship from James’ river, loaded with tobacco, and bound to Amsterdam.  Her master heard our story, believed it, and felt for us.  We only remained with him a week, however, quitting his vessel off the coast of Holland, to go to Hamburg, where I fancied my letters would have been sent, and whence I knew it would be equally in our power to reach home.  At Hamburg, I was fated to meet with disappointment.  There was not a line for me, and we found ourselves without money in a strange place.  I did not deem it prudent to tell our story, but we agreed to ship together in some American, and work our way home in the best manner we could.  After looking about us a little, necessity compelled us to enter in the first vessel that offered.  This was a Philadelphia ship, called the Schuylkill, on board which I shipped as second-mate, while Marble and Neb took the berths of foremast Jacks.  No one questioned us as to the past, and we had decided among ourselves, to do our duty and keep mum.  We used our own names, and that was the extent of our communication on the subject of our true characters.