the admiral.

"Only to make me a captain, my lord."

"Oh, no," said the admiral, "we never make fools captains."

"No!" said I, clapping my arms akimbo in a very impertinent manner;
"then that, I suppose is a new regulation. How long has the order in
council been out?"

The good-humoured old chief laughed heartily at this piece of
impertinence; but the captain whose ship I had so recently quitted was
silly enough to be offended: he found me out, and went and complained of
me to the captain the next day; but my captain only laughed at him, said
he thought it an excellent joke, and invited me to dinner.

Our ship was ordered to Gibraltar, where we arrived soon after; and a
packet coming in from England, I received letters from my father,
announcing the death of my dearest mother. Oh how I then regretted all
the sorrows I had ever caused her; how incessantly did busy memory haunt
me with all my misdeeds, and recall to mind the last moment I had seen
her! I never supposed I could have regretted her half so much. My
father stated that in her last moments she had expressed the greatest
solicitude for my welfare. She feared the career of life on which I had
entered would not conduce to my eternal welfare, however much it might
promise to my temporal advantage. Her dying injunctions to me were,
never to forget the moral and religious principles in which she had
brought me up; and with her last blessing, implored me to read my Bible,
and take it as my guide through life.

My father's letter was both an affecting and forcible appeal; and never,
in the whole course of my subsequent life, were my feelings so worked
upon as they were on that occasion. I went to my hammock with an aching
head and an almost broken heart. A retrospection of my life afforded me
no comfort. The numerous acts of depravity or pride, of revenge or
deceit, of which I had been guilty, rushed through my mind, as she
tempest through the rigging, and called me to the most serious and
melancholy reflections. It was some time before I could collect my
thoughts and analyse my feelings; but when I recalled all my misdeeds--
my departure from that path of virtue so often and so clearly laid down
by my affectionate parent--I was overwhelmed with grief, shame and
repentance. I considered how often I had been on the brink of eternity;
and had I been cut off in my sins, what would have been my destiny? I
started with horror at the danger I had escaped,