This name was bestowed by the captain of the
gun--a fine negro--in honour of his sweetheart, a coloured lady of
Philadelphia. Of Black Bet I was rammer-and-sponger; and ram and sponge
I did, like a good fellow. I have no doubt that, had I and my gun been
at the battle of the Nile, we would mutually have immortalised
ourselves; the ramming-pole would have been hung up in Westminster
Abbey; and I, ennobled by the king, besides receiving the illustrious
honour of an autograph letter from his majesty through the perfumed
right hand of his private secretary.

But it was terrible work to help run in and out of the porthole that
amazing mass of metal, especially as the thing must be clone in a
trice. Then, at the summons of a horrid, rasping rattle, swayed by the
Captain in person, we were made to rush from our guns, seize pikes and
pistols, and repel an imaginary army of boarders, who, by a fiction of
the officers, were supposed to be assailing all sides of the ship at
once. After cutting and slashing at them a while, we jumped back to our
guns, and again went to jerking our elbows.

Meantime, a loud cry is heard of "Fire! fire! fire!" in the fore-top;
and a regular engine, worked by a set of Bowery-boy tars, is forthwith
set to playing streams of water aloft. And now it is "Fire! fire!
fire!" on the main-deck; and the entire ship is in as great a commotion
as if a whole city ward were in a blaze.

Are our officers of the Navy utterly unacquainted with the laws of good
health? Do they not know that this violent exercise, taking place just
after a hearty dinner, as it generally does, is eminently calculated to
breed the dyspepsia? There was no satisfaction in dining; the flavour
of every mouthful was destroyed by the thought that the next moment the
cannonading drum might be beating to quarters.

Such a sea-martinet was our Captain, that sometimes we were roused from
our hammocks at night; when a scene would ensue that it is not in the
power of pen and ink to describe. Five hundred men spring to their
feet, dress themselves, take up their bedding, and run to the nettings
and stow it; then he to their stations--each man jostling his
neighbour--some alow, some aloft; some this way, some that; and in less
than five minutes the frigate is ready for action, and still as the
grave; almost every man precisely where he would be were an enemy
actually about to be engaged. The Gunner, like a Cornwall miner in a
cave, is burrowing do