After a while, finding she didn't move, Bligh lifted his head for a
look about him and found that he'd come to the end of the creek.
He put out a hand and felt the water, that was almost luke-warm with
running over the mud. The trees shut him in; not a living soul was
in sight; and by the quietness he might have been a hundred miles
from anywhere. So what does my gentleman do but strip himself for a
comfortable bathe.
He folded his clothes very neatly in the stern-sheets, waded out
across the shallows as naked as a babe, and took to the water with so
much delight that after a minute or so he must needs lie on his back
and kick. He splashed away, one leg after the other, with his face
turned towards the shore, and was just on the point of rolling over
for another swim, when, as he lifted a leg for one last kick, his
eyes fell on the boat. And there on the top of his clothes, in the
stern of her, sat my grandfather sucking a pipe.
Bligh let down his legs and stood up, touching bottom, but neck-deep
in water.
"Hi, you there!" he sings out.
"Wee, wee, parleyvou!" my grandfather answers, making use of pretty
well all the French he knew.
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