Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/281

 minded us of his wife and starving children at Baltimore, and he implored us to think of them and of our own.

I was melted to tears, I confess; but my men heard him with the most stoical unconcern. Two of them threw him over to the opposite side of the deck; and before he could recover from the violence of the fall, pushed me into the boat, and shoved off. The wretched man had by this time crawled over to the side we had just left; and throwing himself on his knees, again screamed out, "Oh, mercy, mercy, mercy!—For,God's sake, have mercy, if you expect any!—Oh, God! my wife and babes!"

His prayers, I lament to say, had no effect on the exasperated seamen. He then fell into a fit of cursing and blasphemy, evidently bereft of his senses; and in this shield he continued for some minutes, while we lay alongside, the bowman holding on with the boat-hook only. I was secretly determined not to leave him, although I foresaw a mutiny in the boat in con-