ith a lad weaker
than himself. This I will enforce by a plain fact that happened to
myself. A tall, consequential, thirty-years-old master's mate,
threatened to beat me, after the manner that oldsters are accustomed to
beat youngsters. I told him, that if he struck me, I would strike again
as long as I had strength to stand, or power to lift my hand. He
laughed, and struck me. I retaliated; it is true that I got a sound
thrashing; but it was my first and last, and my tyrant got both his eyes
well blackened, his cheek swollen--and was altogether so much defaced,
that he was forced to hide himself in the sick-list for a fortnight.
The story could not be told well for him, but it told for me gloriously;
indeed, he felt so much annoyed by the whole affair, that he went and
asked leave to go and mess with the gunner, fairly stating to the
captain that he could not run the risk of keeping order--for he was our
caterer--if he had to fight a battle every time he had to enforce it.

But I cannot too much caution youngsters against having recourse, in
their self-defence, to deadly weapons. I am sorry to say, it was too
common when I was in the navy. It is un-English and assassin-like. It
rarely keeps off the tyrant; the knife, the dirk, or whatever else may
be the instrument, is almost invariably forced from the young bravo's
hand, and the thrashing that he afterwards gets is pitiless, and the
would-be stabber finds no voice lifted in his favour. He also gains the
stigma of cowardice, and the bad reputation of being malignant and
revengeful. Indeed, so utterly futile is the drawing of murderous
instruments in little affrays of this sort, that, though I have known
them displayed hundreds of times, yet I never knew a single wound to
have been inflicted--though many a heavy beating has followed the
atrocious display. By all means, let my young friends avoid it.

On the day before we sailed from Sheerness, the captain had an order
conveyed to the first-lieutenant to send me away on duty immediately,
for two or three hours. I was bundled into the pinnace with old canvas,
old ropes, and old blocks, condemned stores to the dock-yard, and, as I
approached the landing-place appropriated for the use of admirals _in
posse_, I saw embark from the stairs, exclusively set apart for admirals
and post-captains _in esse_, my captain and the port-admiral in the
admiral's barge, and seated between these two awful personages, there
sat