How I came to be aboard the armed sloop, is easily told.  Four-and-twenty marines under command of a lieutenant—­that officer’s name was Linderwood—­had been told off at Belize, to proceed to Silver-Store, in aid of boats and seamen stationed there for the chase of the Pirates.  The Island was considered a good post of observation against the pirates, both by land and sea; neither the pirate ship nor yet her boats had been seen by any of us, but they had been so much heard of, that the reinforcement was sent.  Of that party, I was one.  It included a corporal and a sergeant.  Charker was corporal, and the sergeant’s name was Drooce.  He was the most tyrannical non-commissioned officer in His Majesty’s service.

The night came on, soon after I had had the foregoing words with Charker.  All the wonderful bright colours went out of the sea and sky in a few minutes, and all the stars in the Heavens seemed to shine out together, and to look down at themselves in the sea, over one another’s shoulders, millions deep.  Next morning, we cast anchor off the Island.  There was a snug harbour within a little reef; there was a sandy beach; there were cocoa-nut trees with high straight stems, quite bare, and foliage at the top like plumes of magnificent green feathers; there were all the objects that are usually seen in those parts, and I am not going to describe them, having something else to tell about.

Great rejoicings, to be sure, were made on our arrival.  All the flags in the place were hoisted, all the guns in the place were fired, and all the people in the place came down to look at us.  One of those Sambo fellows—­they call those natives Sambos, when they are half-negro and half-Indian—­had come off outside the reef, to pilot us in, and remained on board after we had let go our anchor.  He was called Christian George King, and was fonder of all hands than anybody else was.  Now, I confess, for myself, that on that first day, if I had been captain of the Christopher Columbus, instead of private in the Royal Marines, I should have kicked Christian George King—­who was no more a Christian than he was a King or a George—­over the side, without exactly knowing why, except that it was the right thing to do.

But, I must likewise confess, that I was not in a particularly pleasant humour, when I stood under arms that morning, aboard the Christopher Columbus in the harbour of the Island of Silver-Store.  I had had a hard life, and the life of the English on the Island seemed too easy and too gay to please me.  “Here you are,” I thought to myself, “good scholars and good livers; able to read what you like, able to write what you like, able to eat and drink what you like, and spend what you like, and do what you like; and much you care for a poor, ignorant Private in the Royal Marines!  Yet it’s hard, too, I think, that you should have all the half-pence, and I all the kicks; you all the smooth, and I all the rough; you all the oil, and I all the vinegar.”  It was as envious a thing to think as might be, let alone its being nonsensical; but, I thought it.  I took it so much amiss, that, when a very beautiful young English lady came aboard, I grunted to myself, “Ah! you have got a lover, I’ll be bound!” As if there was any new offence to me in that, if she had!