We, quite unconscious of what was done, came soon after, found our veal, and marched off with it.  The prisoners were in the meantime sent on board the flag ship, with the charge of robbery strongly preferred against them; indeed, flagrante delicto was proved.  In vain they protested that they were not the slayers, but only went in search of what others had killed:  the admiral, who was a kind-hearted man, said, that that was a very good story, but desired them “not to tell lies to old rogues,” and ordered them all under arrest:  at the same time giving directions for a most rigid scrutiny into the larder of the other gun-boat, with a view, if possible, to discover the remains of the calf.  This we had foreseen would happen, so we put it into one of the sailor’s bags, and sank it with a lead-line in three fathoms water, where it lay till the inspection was over, when we dressed it, and made an excellent dinner, drinking success to His Majesty’s arms by land and sea.

Whether I had been intemperate in food or libation I know not, but I was attacked with the Walcheren fever, and was sent home in a line-of-battle ship; and, perhaps, as Pangloss says, it was all for the best; for I knew I could not have left off my inveterate habits, and it would have been very inconvenient to me, and distressing to my friends, to have ended my brilliant career, and stopped these memoirs, at the beginning of the second and most interesting volume, by hanging the Author up, like a scarecrow, under the superintendence of the rascally provost-marshal, merely for catering on the land of a Walcheren farmer.  Moreover, the Dutch were unworthy of liberty, as their actions proved, to begrudge a few fowls, or a fillet of veal, to the very men who came to rescue them from bondage;—­and then their water, too, who ever drank such stuff? for my part, I never tasted it when I could get anything better.  As to their nasty swamps and fogs, quite good enough for such croaking fellows as they are, what could induce an Englishman to live among them, except the pleasure of killing Frenchmen, or shooting game?  Deprive us of these pursuits, which the surrender of Flushing effectually did, and Walcheren, with its ophthalmia and its agues, was no longer a place for a gentleman.  Besides, I plainly saw that if there ever had been any intention of advancing to Antwerp, the time was now gone by; and as the French were laughing at us, and I never liked to be made a butt of, particularly by such chaps as these, I left the scene of our sorrows and disgraces without regret.

The farewell of Voltaire came into my mind. “Adieu, Canaux, Canardes, et Canaille,” which might be rendered into English thus:—­“Good-bye, Dykes, Ducks, and Dutchmen.”  So I returned to my father’s house to be nursed by my sister, and to astonish the neighbours with the history of our wonderful achievements.

Chapter XII

First came great Neptune, with his three-forkt mace,
That rules the seas, and makes them rise or fall: 
His dewy locks did drop with brine apace
Under his diademe-imperiall: 
And by his side his queene with coronall,
Fair Amphitrite