the Downs, and
you'll, of course, be treated as your rank in the service requires. If
you have not, I must only take the responsibility on myself to regard
you as an impressed man. Very hard, I know, but can't help it. Stand
by."

These few words were uttered with a most impetuous speed; and as all
reply to them was impossible, I saw my case decided and my fate decreed,
even before I knew they were under litigation.

As we marched forward to go below, I overheard an officer say to
another:

"Hay will get into a scrape about those French fellows; they may turn
out to be officers, after all."

"What matter?" cried the other. "One is dying; and the other Hay means
to draft on board the 'Temeraire.' Depend upon it, we'll never hear more
of either of them."

This was far from pleasant tidings; and yet I knew not any remedy for
the mishap. I had never seen the officer who spoke to me ashore, since
we came on board. I knew of none to intercede for me; and as I sat down
on the bench beside poor Santron's cot, I felt my heart lower than it
had ever been before. I was never enamored of the sea service; and
certainly the way to overcome my dislike was not by engaging against my
own country; and yet this, in all likelihood, was now to be my fate.
These were my last waking thoughts the first night I passed on board the
Athol.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

A BOLD STROKE FOR FAME AND FORTUNE.

To be awakened suddenly from a sound sleep; hurried, half-dressed, up a
gangway; and, ere your faculties have acquired free play, be passed over
a ship's side, on a dark and stormy night, into a boat wildly tossed
here and there, with spray showering over you, and a chorus of loud
voices about you! is an event not easily forgotten. Such a scene still
dwells in my memory, every incident of it as clear and distinct as
though it had occurred only yesterday. In this way was I "passed," with
twelve others, on board his majesty's frigate, Temeraire, a vessel
which, in the sea service, represented what a well-known regiment did on
shore, and bore the reputation of being a "condemned ship;" this
depreciating epithet having no relation to the qualities of the vessel
herself, which was a singularly beautiful French model, but only to that
of the crew and officers; it being the policy of the day to isolate the
blackguards of both services, confining them to particular crafts and
corps, making, as it were, a kind of _index expurgatorius_, where all