contracted souls; imputable, no
doubt, to their groveling duties. More especially was this evinced in
the case of those odious ditchers and night scavengers, the ignoble
"Waisters."

The members of the band, some ten or twelve in number, who had nothing
to do but keep their instruments polished, and play a lively air now
and then, to stir the stagnant current in our poor old Commodore's
torpid veins, were the most gleeful set of fellows you ever saw. They
were Portuguese, who had been shipped at the Cape De Verd islands, on
the passage out. They messed by themselves; forming a dinner-party, not
to be exceeded ire mirthfulness, by a club of young bridegrooms, three
months after marriage, completely satisfied with their bargains, after
testing them.

But what made them, now, so full of fun? What indeed but their merry,
martial, mellow calling. Who could he a churl, and play a flageolet?
who mean and spiritless, braying forth the souls of thousand heroes
from his brazen trump? But still more efficacious, perhaps, in
ministering to the light spirits of the band, was the consoling
thought, that should the ship ever go into action, they would be
exempted from the perils of battle. In ships of war, the members of the
"music," as the band is called, are generally non-combatants; and
mostly ship, with the express understanding, that as soon as the vessel
comes within long gun-shot of an enemy, they shall have the privilege
of burrowing down in the cable-tiers, or sea coal-hole. Which shows
that they are inglorious, but uncommonly sensible fellows.

Look at the barons of the gun-room--Lieutenants, Purser, Marine
officers, Sailing-master--all of them gentlemen with stiff upper lips,
and aristocratic cut noses. Why was this? Will any one deny, that from
their living so long in high military life, served by a crowd of menial
stewards and cot-boys, and always accustomed to command right and left;
will any one deny, I say, that by reason of this, their very noses had
become thin, peaked, aquiline, and aristocratically cartilaginous? Even
old Cuticle, the Surgeon, had a Roman nose.

But I never could account how it came to be, that our grey headed First
Lieutenant was a little lop-sided; that is, one of his shoulders
disproportionately dropped. And when I observed, that nearly all the
First Lieutenants I saw in other men-of-war, besides many Second and
Third Lieutenants, were similarly lop-sided, I knew that there must be
some gen