She was considered
one of the best ships out of America, and her master had a high
reputation for seamanship and activity. He was a little man of the
name of Digges, and was under thirty at the time I first knew him. He
took us on board purely out of a national feeling, for his ship was
strong-handed without us, having thirty-two souls, all told, when he
received us five. We afterwards learned that letters sent after the
ship had induced Captain Digges to get five additional hands in
Calcutta, in order to be able to meet the picaroons that were then
beginning to plunder American vessels, even on their own coast, under
the pretence of their having violated certain regulations made by the
two great belligerents of the day, in Europe. This was just the
commencement of the _quasi_ war which broke out a few weeks later
with France.
Of all these hostile symptoms, however, I then knew little and cared
less. Even Mr. Marble had never heard of them and we five joined the
Tigris merely to get passages home, without entertaining second
thoughts of running any risk, further than the ordinary dangers of the
seas.
The Tigris sailed the day we joined her, which was the third after we
reached Mauritius, and just fifteen days after we had left the
wreck. We went to sea with the wind at the southward, and had a good
run off the island, making more than a hundred miles that afternoon
and in the course of the night.
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