to the full the embarrassing nature of the position, they were content simply to demand the redress of their grievances as their terms of surrender; when, untowardly for their claims, a ship of war hove in sight, much in want of men, and, bearing down on the Indiaman, the mutiny was at once suppressed, and the leading mutineers sent aboard the armed vessel, accompanied by a grave charge, and the worst possible of characters. Luckily for them, however, and especially luckily for the Irishman and his friend, the war-ship was so weakened by scurvy, at that time the untamed pest of the navy, that scarce two dozen of her crew could do duty aloft A fierce tropical tempest, too, which broke out not long after, pleaded powerfully in their favour; and the affair terminated in the ultimate promotion of the Irishman to the office of ship-schoolmaster, and of his Scotch comrade to the captaincy of the foretop.

My narrative abides with the latter. He remained for several years aboard a man-of-war, and, though not much in love with the service, did his duty in both storm and battle. He served in the action off the Dogger-Bank,—one of the last naval engagements fought ere the man[oe]uvre of breaking the line gave to British valour its due superiority, by rendering all our great sea-battles decisive; and a comrade who sailed in the same vessel, and from whom, when a boy, I have received kindness for my father's sake, has told me that, their ship being but indifferently manned at the time, and the extraordinary personal strength and activity of his friend well known, he had a station assigned him at his gun against two of the crew, and that during the action he actually outwrought them both. At length, however, the enemy drifted to leeward to refit; and when set to repair the gashed and severed rigging, such was his state of exhaustion, in consequence of the previous overstrain on every nerve and muscle, that he had scarce vigour enough left to raise the marlingspike employed in the work to the level of his face. Suddenly, when in this condition, a signal passed along the line, that the Dutch fleet, already refitted, was bearing down to renew the engagement. A thrill like that of an electric shock passed through the frame of the exhausted sailor; his fatigue at once left him; and, vigorous and strong as when the action first began, he found himself able, as before, to run out against his two comrades the one side of a four-and-twenty pounder. The instance is a curious one of the influence of that "spirit" which, according to the Wise King, enables a man to "sustain his infirmity."

It may be well not to inquire too curiously regarding the mode in which this effective sailor quitted the navy. The country had borrowed his services without consulting his will; and he, I suspect, reclaimed them on his own behalf without first asking leave. I have been told by my mother that he found the navy very intolerable;—the mutiny at the Nore had not yet meliorated the service to the common sailor. Among other hardships, he had been oftener than once under not only very harsh, but also very incompetent officers; and on one occasion, after toiling on the foreyard in a violent night-squall, with some of the best seamen aboard, in fruitless attempts to furl up the sail, he had to descend, cap in hand, at the risk of a flogging, and humbly implore the boy-lieutenant in charge that he should order the vessel's head to be laid in a certain direction. Luckily for him, the advice was taken by the young gentleman, and in a few minutes the sail was furled. He left his ship one fine morning, attired in his best, and having on his head a three-cornered hat, with tufts of lace at the corners, which I well remember, from the circumstance that it had long after to perform an important part in certain boyish masquerades at Christmas and the New Year; and as he had taken effective precautions for being reported missing in the evening, he got clear off.

Of some of the after-events of his life I retain such mere fragmentary recollections, dissociated from date and locality, as might be most readily seized on by the imagination of a child. At one time, when engaged in one of his Indian voyages, he was stationed during the night, accompanied by but a single comrade, in a small open boat, near one of the minor mouths of the Ganges; and he had just fallen asleep on the beams, when he was suddenly awakened by a violent motion, as if his skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the imperfect light a huge tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the neighbouring jungle, in the act of boarding the boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or foot-spars, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a tremendous snarl, and he saw it no more. On another occasion, he was one of three men sent with despatches to some Indian port in a boat, which, oversetting in the open sea in a squall, left them for the greater part of three days only its upturned bottom for their resting-place. And so thickly during that time did the sharks congregate around them, that though a keg of rum, part of the boat's stores, floated for the first two days within a few yards of them, and they had neither meat nor drink, none of them, though they all swam well, dared attempt regaining it. They were at length relieved by a Spanish vessel, and treated with such kindness, that the subject of my narrative used ever after to speak well of the Spaniards, as a generous people, destined ultimately to rise. He was at one time so reduced by scurvy, in a vessel half of whose crew had been carried off by the disease, that, though still able to do duty on the tops, the pressure of his finger left for several seconds a dent in his thigh, as if the muscular flesh had become of the consistency of dough. At another time, when overtaken in a small vessel by a protracted tempest, in which "for many days neither sun nor moon appeared," he continued to retain his hold of the helm for twelve hours after every other man aboard was utterly prostrated and down, and succeeded, in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who had served his apprenticeship under him, was treated with great kindness on the Spanish Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at imminent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when, in circumstances of similar exhaustion, they were drifting full upon an iron-bound shore. Many of my other recollections of this manly sailor are equally fragmentary in their character; but there is a distinct bit of picture in them all, that strongly impressed the boyish fancy.

When not much turned of thirty, the sailor returned to his native town, with money enough, hardly earned, and carefully kept, to buy a fine large sloop, with which he engaged in the coasting trade; and shortly after he married his cousin's daughter. He found his cousin, who had supported herself in her widowhood by teaching a school, residing in a dingy, old-fashioned house, three rooms in length, but with the windows of its second story half-buried in the eaves, that had been left her by their mutual grandfather, old John Feddes, one of the last of the buccaneers. It had been built, I have every reason to believe, with Spanish gold; not, however, with a great deal of it, for, notwithstanding its six rooms, it was a rather humble erection, and had now fallen greatly into disrepair. It was fitted up with some of the sailor's money, and, after his marriage, became his home,—a home rendered all the happier by the