25th. Found ourselves come to the fleete, and so aboard the Prince; and
there, after a good while in discourse, we did agree a bargain of L5,000
with Sir Roger Cuttance for my Lord Sandwich for silk, cinnamon, nutmeggs,
and indigo. And I was near signing to an undertaking for the payment of
the whole sum; but I did by chance escape it; having since, upon second
thoughts, great cause to be glad of it, reflecting upon the craft and not
good condition, it may be, of Captain Cocke. I could get no trifles for
my wife. Anon to dinner and thence in great haste to make a short visit
to Sir W. Pen, where I found them and his lady and daughter and many
commanders at dinner. Among others Sir G. Askue, of whom whatever the
matter is, the world is silent altogether. But a very pretty dinner there
was, and after dinner Sir W. Pen made a bargain with Cocke for ten bales
of silke, at 16s. per lb., which, as Cocke says, will be a good
pennyworth, and so away to the Prince and presently comes my Lord on board
from Greenwich, with whom, after a little discourse about his trusting of
Cocke, we parted and to our yacht; but it being calme, we to make haste,
took our wherry toward Chatham; but, it growing darke, we were put to
great difficultys, our simple, yet confident waterman, not knowing a step
of the way; and we found ourselves to go backward and forward, which, in
the darke night and a wild place, did vex us mightily. At last we got a
fisher boy by chance, and took him into the boat, and being an odde kind
of boy, did vex us too; for he would not answer us aloud when we spoke to
him, but did carry us safe thither, though with a mistake or two; but I
wonder they were not more. In our way I was [surprised] and so were we
all, at the strange nature of the sea-water in a darke night, that it
seemed like fire upon every stroke of the oare, and, they say, is a sign
of winde. We went to the Crowne Inne, at Rochester, and there to supper,
and made ourselves merry with our poor fisher-boy, who told us he had not
been in a bed in the whole seven years since he came to 'prentice, and