SWABEY DIARY. 43 
he and I were not ready to undertake. He would run all over the rig- 
ging with the sailors, and he maintained (he was an excellent scholar 
as well as a Brasen-nose man) sometimes very strange opinions con- — 
cerning various things. I do not know now whether he supported his 
opinions mathematically or no. He would have it that a man could get 
his whole body through any place into which he could put his head. 
To illustrate this, we persuaded him to put his head into a round hole 
in the upper bulwarks of the transport, designed for some 8-pr. swivels ; 
this he did with good success, but not finding the diameter of his head 
equal to that of his body, he could get no further, and strange to say, 
he could not get back again, for his nose was compressed as he went 
through, but could not be brought to consent to his return, and there 
he might have remained, ever and anon swallowing a briny draught as 
the vessel stooped to leeward and threw up the foaming spray, had not he 
been most scientifically sawn out by the ship’s carpenter, but not till 
he had undergone a salutary lesson in patience, and promised all the 
engagements which the man chose to exact from him ! 
It was rather singular that he was not the only volunteer with us. 
Two gentlemen, brothers, with whom I had been at school, and who 
had an intimate friend amongst us likewise, came to Lisbon, intending 
to accompany our steps. The eldest went out of his mind, and the 
younger one got him back to England as soon as he could. It was 
thought well to let the latter follow his.own bent, and a commission was 
procured for him in a Dragoon regiment. The very first skirmish the 
poor fellow was present at, only a few days after joining the regiment, 
he was killed! I have often thought his friends owed us little grati- 
tude, though they always took a lively interest ever after in our 
concerns. | 
6th August.—We were obliged to remain on board all day again for 
want of a boat. Harding, and Bridges,? who was on his way to Cadiz 
in the Royal Yeoman, the very transport I sailed in down the river 
from Copenhagen, dined withus . .. . 
7th August.—We went to Falmouth this day, where we met Captain 
Deacon of the Hast Kent, formerly of the 1st Battalion, R.A. We dined 
ENS: LOANS ja, Bt eed bh eice- ier hie el ox eee ae Ma lee tS wishes Ph 
Sth August.—-Dined on board “‘8.K.,” Dyneley on shore. 
Ith August.—Left Falmouth early this morning. In getting under 
weigh, being to windward of No. 15 transport, we ran foul of her and 
carried away her quarter-piece and sprung her mizzen-mast. She, how- 
ever, put to sea. We lay-to off the harbour for some hours for the 
rest of the fleet to come out, wind N.W. and very rough: though not 
dangerous, the motion was very unpleasant, and the noise kept me 
awake the greater part of the night; we found we were ourselves the 
only landsmen not sick. N.B.—Wrote a letter to Maurice, but having 
no pilot could not send it. The Fame, brig, in which my horses are em- 
? William J. Lyon was appointed a Cornet in the 14th Light Dragoons on the 23rd April, 1812. 
He was killed in an engagement near Lembege, in the south of France, on the 18th March, 1814. 
2 Lieutenant HE. J. Bridges, R.A. 
