t
expedition, or a dash ashore to spike the guns of an outlying battery;
but, when I first knew him, was utterly unfit for any service requiring
discretion or tact in its execution.

The third lieutenant, the Honourable Edward Plantagenet Mortimer, was
simply a useless, soft-headed dandy, who would as soon have dreamed of
throwing himself overboard as of soiling his hands; there was no harm in
him, he was good-natured enough, but he was emphatically _the_ idler of
the ship, never even making a pretence of performing any duty, but
simply dawdling about the deck in kid gloves, with an eye-glass
eternally screwed into his starboard top-light. His one idea was that
he was a brilliant performer on the flute; and in his watch below he was
incessantly rendering the lives of his neighbours a burden to them by
the melancholy wailings which he evoked from that instrument. It was
said that he could fight--when no other alternative was open to him--but
the bustle and confusion, and, above all, the exertion, he considered
such "a howwid boah," that he always most carefully avoided those
occasions for distinguishing himself, which other men are wont to seek
with avidity. Why on earth he ever entered the navy was a puzzle which
utterly defied solution.

The master, Mr Rawlings, was a middle-aged man, quiet and unobtrusive
in manner, and with very little to say upon any subject unconnected with
his profession. There, however, he was unapproachable. He was simply
perfect as a navigator, seemed to have been in and out of every harbour
in the world, and was intimately acquainted with the position of every
rock and shoal which guarded their approach, together with the
distinctive features of every light, beacon, or buoy which announced
their vicinity; knew the direction and rates of the various currents,
and could tell, without referring to his chart, the depths of water over
bars and in channels, together with the bearings of the fairways in the
latter, how wide they were, and the hour of high-water in them at the
full and change of the moon; in fact, his information on such matters
appeared to be quite inexhaustible. He was unquestionably the ablest
master in the entire British navy; and one of the first anxieties of a
captain, when in quest of a crew, was to get hold of "old Rawlings" as
master.

We midshipmen were six in number; four of my messmates being older, and
one younger than myself. They were all good-tempered, agreea