his eyes to
cover our multitude of sins, so the affair blew over.

While we lay in Malta Harbour, my friend Murphy fell overboard one
night, just after all the boats were hoisted in; he could not swim,
and would have been drowned if I had not jumped overboard and held him
up until a boat was lowered down to our assistance. The officers and
ship's company gave me more credit for this action than I really
deserved. To have saved any person under such circumstances, they
said, was a noble deed; but to risk my life for a man who had always,
from my first coming into the ship, been my bitterest enemy, was more
than they could have expected, and was undoubtedly the noblest revenge
that I could have taken. But they were deceived--they knew me not:
it was my vanity, and the desire of oppressing my enemy under an
intolerable weight of obligation, that induced me to rush to his
rescue; moreover, as I stood on the gangway witnessing his struggles
for life, I felt that I was about to lose all the revenge I had so
long laid up in store; in short, I could not spare him, and only saved
him, as a cat does a mouse, to torment him.

Murphy acknowledged his obligations, and said the terrors of death
were upon him; but in a few days forgot all I had done for him,
consummated his own disgrace, and raised my character on the ruins of
his own. On some frivolous occasion he threw a basin of dirty water
in my face as I passed through the steerage; this was too good an
opportunity to gratify my darling passion. I had long watched for
an occasion to quarrel with him; but as he had been ill during our
passage from Gibraltar to Malta, I could not justify any act of
aggression. He had now recovered, and was in the plentitude of his
strength, and I astonished him by striking the first blow.

A set-to followed; I brought up all my scientific powers in aid of my
strength and the memory of former injuries. I must do him the justice
to say he never showed more game--but he had everything to contend
for; if I was beaten I was only where I was before, but with him the
case would have been different. A fallen tyrant has no friends. Stung
to madness by the successful hits I planted in his face, he lost his
temper, while I was cool; he fought wildly, I stopped all his blows,
and paid them with interest. He stood forty-three rounds, and then
gave in with his eyes bunged up, and his face so swollen and so
covered with blood, as not to be known by his friends