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126 HISTORY OB^ THE INDIAN NAVY.
belonging to that nation. They were carried to Havannah and
imprisoned there for a considerable time. At length he and his
comrades were released from captivity, and embarked on board
a brig which was bound to the colony of South Carolina.
But evil fortune still followed in their footsteps. A few days
after leaving Cuba it commenced to blow very heavily. The
brig was a crazy old craft, ill adapted to contend against the
storms of these latitudes. She began to leak, and as the
gale increased in strength, so did the water gain upon her,
notwithstanding the efforts of the commander and his men to
keep it under. Besides pumping, recourse was had to bailing,
but this also was ineffectual. At length Mr. James became
convinced that she would not float much longer, and expressed
his determination to leave her and take his chance in one of the
boats. Seven of the seamen offered to join him in his perilous
venture, the remainder preferring to remain on board the
brig. Accordingly a small boat was prepared, and stored
with a keg of water and a bag of biscuits, and hardly had they
got clear of the brig than she suddenly disappeared. The gale
continued to blow for some days, though scarcely so heavily as
at first; at length it subsided, but, being unprovided with a
compass, Mr. James knew not whither to steer, and so for
twenty days the boat was driven by the wind where it listed.
The supply of fresh water was doled out with the utmost nicety
from Mr. James's snuff-box, and the biscuits, which had been
rendered almost unfit for food by the salt-water making a clean
breach over the boat, were also served out in equal portions. On
the twentieth day land was sighted, and, though it proved to be
the island of Cuba, any terra firmawas joyfully welcome to the
tempest-tossed mariners. With great difliculty the party
succeeded in affecting a landing on the coast, and, on making
inquiries, learned that they were no more than ten miles distant
from their old prison ; but the starvation and hardships they
had undergone had wrought a great change in their estimate
of a Spanish dungeon, and, in comparison with the cramped up
thwarts of an open boat in a raging sea, they welcomed its
squalid wretchedness. Only one out of the party of eight died
from the effects of the severe sufferings they had endured : the
others indeed lost the use of their limbs for a considerable time,
but, ultimately, they all recovered. After a captivity of a few
months, the Spaniards released their prisoners, and they returned
to England in a British vessel.
Soon after his arrival Mr. James married, and, as an honorable
testimony that the obscurity of his origin did not stand in the
way of his achieving distinction, any more than it did in the case
of Sir Cloudesley Shovel and many other famous English admirals,
it may be mentioned that his wife kept a public-house in the
now classic region of Wapping, known as the "Red Cow." It