words were uttered with a most impetuous speed; and as all
reply to them was impossible, I saw my case decided and my fate decreed,
even before I knew they were under litigation.

As we were marched forwards to go below, I overheard an officer say to
another--

'Hay will get into a scrape about those French fellows; they may turn
out to be officers, after all.'

'What matter?' cried the other. 'One is dying; and the other Hay means
to draft on board the _Temeraire_. Depend upon it, we'll never hear more
of either of them.'

This was far from pleasant tidings; and yet I knew not any remedy for
the mishap. I had never seen the officer who spoke to me ashore since we
came on board. I knew of none to intercede for me; and as I sat down on
the bench beside poor Santron's cot, I felt my heart lower than it
had ever been before. I was never enamoured of the sea-service; and
certainly the way to overcome my dislike was not by engaging against
my own country; and yet this, in all likelihood, was now to be my fate.
These were my last waking thoughts the first night I passed on board the
_Athol_.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A BOLD STROKE FOR FAME AND FORTUNE

To be awakened suddenly from a sound sleep, hurried half-dressed up a
gangway, and, ere your faculties have acquired free play, be passed over
a ship's side, on a dark and stormy night, into a boat wildly tossed
here and there, with spray showering over you, and a chorus of loud
voices about you, is an event not easily forgotten. Such a scene still
dwells in my memory, every incident of it as clear and distinct as
though it had occurred only yesterday. In this way was I 'passed,' with
twelve others, on board his Majesty's frigate, _Temeraire_, a vessel
which, in the sea-service, represented what a well-known regiment did
on shore, and bore the reputation of being a 'condemned ship'--this
depreciating epithet having no relation to the qualities of the vessel
herself, which was a singularly beautiful French model, but only to that
of the crew and officers, it being the policy of the day to isolate the
blackguards of both services, confining them to particular crafts and
corps, making, as it were, a kind of _index expurgatorius_, where all
the rascality was available at a moment's notice.

It would be neither agreeable to my reader nor myself, if I should
dwell on this theme, nor linger on a description where cruelty,
crime, heartless tyranny, and reckless insubordination ma