hold of the hammock-rails with both hands, so that his huge, round, red face, just peeped above the tarpaulin hammock-cloths, his chin resting upon them, no bad type of an angry sun showing his face above the rim of a black cloud, through a London November fog.

"Take care, doctor," I sang out, for I had seen the flashings of the enemy's guns.

"Light bobs," said the jeering doctor; when away flew the upper part of his hat, and down he dropped on the deck, on that part which nature seems to have purposely padded in order to make the fall of man easy.

"No light bob, however," said I.

The doctor arose, rubbing with an assiduity that strongly reminded me of my old schoolmaster, Mr. Roots.

"To your station, doctor," said the captain harshly.

Spoilt a good hat in trying to make a bad joke;" and he shuffled himself below.

"Your gig, Captain Reud, knocked all to shivers," said a petty officer.

This was the unkindest cut of all. As we were approaching Barbadoes, the captain had caused his very handsome gig to be hoisted in from over the stern, placed on the thwarts of the launch, and it had been in that position, only the day before, very elaborately painted. The irritated commander seized hold of the lanyard of one of the eighteen-pounders, exclaiming at the same time," Mr. Burn, when you have got your sight, fire!"

The two pieces of artillery simultaneously roared out their thunders, the smoke was driven aft immediately, and down toppled the three topmasts of the corvette. The falling of those masts was a beautiful sight. They did not rush down impetuously, but stooped themselves gradually and gracefully, with all their clouds of canvas. A swan in mid air, with her drooping wings broken by a shot, slowly descending, might give you some idea of the view. But after the descent of the multitudinous sails, the beauty was wholly destroyed. Where before there careened gallantly and triumphantly before the gale a noble ship, now nothing but a wreck appeared painfully to trail along laboriously its tattered and degraded ruins.

"What do you think of that shot, Mr. Farmer ?" said the little captain, all exultation. "Pray, Mr. Percy, where did Mr. Burn's

shot fall ?"

"One of the shot struck the water about half a mile to port, sir," said I, for I was still at my post watching the proceedings. "O Mr. Burn! Mr. Burn! what could you be about? It is really shameful to throw away his Majesty's shot in that manner. Mr. Burn!" said the captain, more in pity than in anger. Mr. Burn looked ridiculously foolish.

"O Mr. Burn," said I, "is this all you can show to justify your bragging?"

"If ever I fire a shot with the captain again," said the mortified gunner, may I be rammed, crammed, and jammed in a mortar, and blown to atoms."

In the space of a quarter of an hour we were alongside of the Jean

Bart. She mounted twenty-two guns, was crowded with a dirty crew, and after taking out most of them, and sending plenty of hands on board, in two hours more we had got up her spare topmasts.

Before dark every thing appeared to be as if nothing had occurred, with the exception of the captain's gig and the doctor's hat; and hauling our wind, in company with our prize, we made sail towards that quarter in which we had left our convoy.

I am going to mention a very trivial anecdote; but as it is one of those curious coincidences, upon which are grounded so much superstition, I may be pardoned for narrating it. After the topmasts of the prize had fallen, every body had run below in the Jean Bart, with the exception of the captain, and two or three of the officers. The captain had taken the wheel, and still kept his vessel before the wind. When we were close upon her, we had hailed him several times to broach to, but either not hearing, or not understanding, there was no attention paid to our commands. The consequence was, a half dozen marines were ordered to fire into her. This had the desired effect. Of the four or five persons still on her decks, the captain was the only one struck. The ball passed through his right arm. He then let go the wheel immediately, and the ship came, with her yards all square, and the wreck hanging about her, right into the wind.

When the French commander was having his wound dressed in the gun-room, he continued sacré-ing between his teeth, cette maudite chemise. The ball had passed clean through the arm, and not half an inch from the spot there were two scars, the marks that showed the passage of another ball, and on the shirt that he had on were the corresponding orifices.

This is the story of the shirt, which we had from his own mouth, and which he told the officers without much appearance of shame. The few French vessels then upon the seas were hunted about without intermission. They could rarely make any of the few friendly ports that were open to them; and in the West Indies, every harbour was in the hands of their enemies. Consequently, linen of any sort was a great luxury. About two years before, the French captain had boarded and taken possession of an English merchant vessel, on board of which there was the body of a young gentleman, who had the day before died of a consumption. He was attended by an old black woman, indeed, her age was almost as much beyond belief as was her activity and strength. She had nursed this young gentleman's father, and his father, and felt a sort of canine devotion for every one bearing the family name. She had dressed out the body in the best linen shirt that she could find.

As the French captain had no idea of running into Antigua in order that the rites of sepulture should be paid to the departed plantation proprietor, he ordered the corpse, amidst the imprecations of the old negress, to have a shot attached to it, and to be thrown overboard. Not wishing to lose a good shirt, when shirts were so very scarce, he had it removed from the body, as he thought any old canvas was good enough to sink a corpse in. The horror of the negress at this profanation was intense, and she cursed him with all the bitterness of hate and

revenge. Among other things, she wished that every time he put it on, it might bring disgrace and ruin upon his head, wither the strength of his right arm, and be stained with his best blood. Protected as this shirt was by the maledictions of the venerable of years, he had put it on but twice, at the interval of a year. Each time he had been wounded in the right arm, each time been ruined, and each time lost his ship.

Three times is generally considered fatal in similar affairs; but whether he experienced this fatality, I know not. I can only vouch for as much as I have related. Methinks a very pretty nautical drama might be made out of this anecdote, entitled "The Fatal Shirt," or "The Curse of the Oboe Woman." If any manager is inclined to be liberal, my tale and my talents are entirely at his service.

At daylight next morning we found ourselves again with our convoy. Mr. Silva had recaptured the four vessels taken by the felucca. The Falcon hove in sight about mid-day. She had chased the felucca well to windward, when the immense large schooner had intruded herself as a third in the party, and she and the felucca, as well as I could understand, had united and gave the man-of-war brig a pretty considerable tarnation licking, as brother Jonathan hath it.

She certainly made a very shattered appearance, and had lost several men. However, in the official letter of the commander to Captain Reud, all this was satisfactorily explained. He had beaten them both, and they had struck; but owing to night coming on before he could take possession of them, they had most infamously escaped in the darkness. However, it did not much signify, as they were now, having struck, lawful prizes to any English vessel that could lay hold them. I thought at the time that there was no doubt of that.

The next day we made the land. The low island of Barbadoes had the appearance of a highly-cultivated garden, and the green look so refreshing in a hot country, and so dear to me, as it reminded me of England.

I have no intention of repeating the oft-repeated description of the West India islands. What is personal to me I shall relate: of course, incidentally I may be drawn in to describe what has struck me as peculiar to these very favoured regions. We made but a short stay at "little England," as the Barbadians fondly call their verdant plat, and then ran down through all the Virgin islands, leaving parts of our convoy at their various destinations. Our recaptured vessels, with a midshipman in each, also went to the ports to which they were bound. When we were abreast of the island of St. Domingo, our large convoy was reduced to about forty, all of which were consigned to the different ports of Jamaica. Our prize corvette was still in company, as we intended to take her to Port Royal.

We were all in excellent humour: luxuriating in the anticipation of our prize-money, and somewhat glorious in making our appearance in a manner so creditable to ourselves and profitable to the admiral on the station. All this occupied our minds so much, that we had hardly time to think of persecution. But some characters can always find time for mischief, especially when mischief is but another name for pleasure. The activity which Mr. Silva had displayed in making the

recaptures had gained him much respect with his messmates, and seemed to pave the way for a mutual good understanding.

What I am now going to relate could not, by any possibility, happen in the naval service of the present day. Let no one, therefore, suppose that in recording things that actually occurred, I am disseminating a libel against the profession, amongst the members of which I passed the happiest days of my life, in whom I have ever found the most chivalrous honour, the most unbounded generosity, and feelings the most remote from that all-pervading selfishness, that bane of the social circle, and the besetting sin of the times, at least in England. The little that is good, the very little upon which I can pride myself, that my character gathered up, was gained amidst the toils, the dangers, and the constantly occurring privations of my ocean life had the profession, however, been then improved, in many particulars, to what it now is, I make no doubt that it would have had a beneficial effect upon me But no profession, drill the body and awe the mind as it may, can destroy identity of character. Discipline and coercion will, and always do, modify it; and the more the submission of the lower grades of any social pact is complete, the controlling power must necessarily be the more haughty, the more wilful, and too often, becomes the more insolent..

To show the navy as it was, and to point out some of its insolences of office, instead of being a libel, is a compliment to the navy that now is. The affair that drove poor Silva out of the service can never recur; but it may not be amiss to relate it, as it is, in some measure, a justification for that curtailment of the mere wantonness of power in the commanding officer, that now, much to the annoyance of many worthy old tars, exists. It will also show to those who delight in tracing the philosophy of the mind, the rampant course of the passions, when an individual supposes himself above the consideration of the feelings of others, and released from every responsibility, even that of opinion; for opinion dared not make itself heard on board of a man-of-war then, and even now, and properly too, is wholesomely checked by the contemplation of danger.

The second lieutenant was invited to dinner with his two constant quizzers, the fat doctor and the acute purser, just as we had made the east end of Jamaica. I, it having been my forenoon watch, was consequently invited with the officer of it. We had lately been too much occupied to think of annoying each other; but those who unfortunately think that they have a prescriptive right to be disagreeable, and have a single talent that way, (the most common of talents,) seldom violate the advice of the Scripture, that warns us not to hide that one talent in a napkin.

We found our sarcastic little skipper in the blandest and most urbane humour. He received us with a courtesy that almost made me feel affection for him. We found Mr. Farmer, the first lieutenant, with him, and had it not been for a sly twinkling of the eye of the captain, and very significant looks that now and then stole from Mr. Farmer, as he caught the expression of his commander's countenance, I should have thought that that day there was no " minching malicho," or any thing like mischief meant. There were but five of us sat down to

table, yet the dinner was superb. We had, or rather the captain, supplied himself now with all the luxuries of a tropical climate, and those of the temperate were, though he could boast of little temperance, far from exhausted. We had turtle dressed different ways, though our flat friend made his first appearance in the guise of an appetising soup. We had stewed guanna, a large sort of delicious lizard, that most amply repairs the offence done to the eye by his unsightly appearance, in conciliating in a wonderful manner all those minute yet important nerves that providence has so bountifully and so numerously spread over the palate, the tongue, and the uvula. The very contemplation of this beneficent arrangement is enough to make a swearing boatswain pious.

We lacked neither fish, beef, nor mutton; though it is true, that the carcases of the sheep, after having been dressed by the butcher and hung up under the half deck, gave us the consolation of knowing, that while there was a single one on board, we should never be in want of a poop lantern, so delicately thin and transparent were the teguments that united the ribs. Indeed, when properly stretched, the body would have supplied the place of a drum, and but little paring away of flesh would have fitted the legs and shoulders for drumsticks. Of fowls we had every variety, and the curries were excellent. Reud kept two experienced cooks; one was an Indian, well versed in all the mysteries of spices and provocatives, the other a Frenchman, who might have taken a high degree in Baron Rothschild's kitchen, which Hebrew kitchen is, we understand, the best appointed in the Christian world. The rivals sometimes knocked a pot or so over with its luscious contents in their contests for precedency, for cooks and kings have their failings in common; but, I must confess, that their Creole master always administered even-handed justice, by very scrupulously flogging them both.

Well, we will suppose the dinner done, and the West Indian dessert on the table, and that during the repast the suavity of our host had been exemplary. He found some means of putting each of us on good terms with himself. At how little expense we can make each other happy!

The refreshing champagne had circulated two or three times, and the pine-apples had been scientifically cut by the sovereign hand of the skipper, who now in his native regions, seemed to have taken to himself an increased portion of life. All this time nothing personal or in the least offensive had been uttered. The claret, that had been cooling all day, by the means of evaporation, in one of the quarter galleries, was produced, and the captain ordered a couple of bottles to be placed to each person with the exception of myself. Having thrown his legs upon another chair than that on which he was sitting, he commenced, "Now, gentlemen, let us enjoy ourselves. We have the means before us, and we should be very silly not to employ them. In a hot country, I don't like the trouble of passing the bottle."

"It is a great trouble to me, when it is a full one," said Dr. Thompson. "Besides, the bustle and the exertion destroys the continuity of high-toned and intellectual conversation," said Captain Reud, with amiable gravity.