nearly ten o'clock at night
I of course acquiesced in this proposal ; whereupon Lord Southdown was sent into the captain 's cabin for the packet in question ; and on his reappearance a few minutes later we jumped into the boat and went ashore together , his lordship regaling me on the way with sundry entertaining anecdotes whereof his humorous friend Tomkins was the hero . We managed to execute our respective errands without losing any of the boat 's crew ; and duly putting Lord Southdown on board the _ Saint George _ again , I returned triumphantly to the _ Daphne _ with my consignment of eggs and handed them over intact to Mr Austin . After which I dived below , just in time to partake of the first dinner provided for me at the expense of His Most Gracious Majesty George IV . For the remainder of that day and during the whole of the next , until nearly ten o'clock at night , we were up to our eyes in the business of completing stores , etcetera , and , generally , in getting the ship ready for sea ; and at daybreak on the second morning after I had joined , the fore-topsail was loosed , blue peter run up to the fore royal-mast head , the boats hoisted in and stowed , and the messenger passed , after which all hands went to breakfast . At nine o'clock the captain 's gig was sent on shore , and at 11 a.m. the skipper came off ; his boat was hoisted up to the davits , the canvas loosed , the anchor tripped , and away we went down the Solent and out past the Needles , with a slashing breeze at east-south-east and every stitch of canvas set , from the topgallant studding-sails downwards . Our skipper 's instructions were to the effect that he was , in the first instance , to report himself to the governor of Sierra Leone ; and it was to that port , therefore , that we now made the best of our way . The breeze with which we started carried us handsomely down channel and half-way across the Bay of Biscay , and the ship proving to be a regular flyer , everybody , from the skipper downwards , was in the very best of spirits .