g, dived down the companion, and went into his cabin.

The first lieutenant now came up, and congratulated me on my victory.
"You have puzzled and muzzled the bear completely," said he; "I have
long wanted a coadjutor like yourself. Wilson, who is going to leave
us, is the best creature that ever lived: but though brave as a lion
before an enemy, he is cowed by this incarnate devil."

Our conversation was interrupted by a message from the captain, who
desired to speak with me in his cabin. I went down; he received me with
the benignant smile of our first acquaintance.

"Mr Mildmay," said he, "I always assume a little tartness with my
officers when they first join," ("and when they quit you too," thought
I), "not only to prove to them that I am, and will be, the captain of my
own ship, but also as an example to the men, who, when they see what the
officers are forced to put up with, feel themselves more contented with
their lot, and obey more readily; but, as I told you before, the comfort
of my officers is my constant study--you are welcome to go ashore, and
have twenty-four hours' leave to collect your necessaries."

To this harangue I made no reply; but, touching my hat, quitted the
cabin I felt so much contempt for the man that I was afraid to speak,
lest I should commit myself.

The captain shortly after quitted the ship, telling the first lieutenant
that I had permission to go on shore. I was now left at liberty to make
acquaintance with my companions in misery--and nothing conduces to
intimacy so much as community of suffering. My resistance to the
brutality of our common taskmaster had pleased them; they told me what a
tyrant and what a disgrace to the service he was, and how shameful it
was that he should be intrusted with the command of so fine a vessel, or
of any vessel at all, except it were a convict ship. The stories they
told me of him were almost incredible, and nothing but the
too-well-founded idea that an officer trying his captain by a
court-martial had a black mark against him for ever after, and was never
known to rise, could have saved this man from the punishment he so
richly deserved: no officer, they said, had been more than three weeks
in the ship, and they were all making interest to leave her.

In my report of what occurred in this vessel during the time I belonged
to her, I must, in justice to the captains and commanders of His
Majesty's navy, observe, that the case was unique of it