In order to be admitted, it
was necessary to have sailed under the flag five years, and to get a
character. I had sailed, with two short exceptions, thirty-four years
under the flag, and I do believe in all that time, the nineteen months of
imprisonment excluded, I had not been two years unattached to a ship. I
think I must have passed at least a quarter of a century out of sight of
land.[17]
I now went up to New York, and hunted up captain Pell, with whom I had
sailed in the Sully and in the Normandy. This gentleman gave me a
certificate, and, as I left him, handed me a dollar. This was every cent I
had on earth. Next, I found captain Witheroudt, of the Silvie de Grasse
who treated me in precisely the same way. I told him I had _one_ dollar
already, but he insisted it should be _two_. With these two dollars in my
pocket, I was passing up Wall street, when, in looking about me, I saw the
pension office. The reader will remember that I left Washington with the
intention of finding Lemuel Bryant, in order to obtain his certificate,
that I might get a pension for the injury received on board the Scourge.
With this project, I had connected a plan of returning to Boston, and of
getting some employment in the Navy Yard. My pension-ticket had, in
consequence, been made payable at Boston. My arrival at New York, and the
shadding expedition, had upset all this plan; and before I went to
Savannah, I had carried my pension-ticket to the agent in this Wall street
office, and requested him to get another, made payable in New York.
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