ud was very affable and
communicative. He could talk of nothing but the beautiful coast of
Leghorn; the superb bay of Naples; pleasant trips to Rome; visits to
Tripoli; and other interesting parts on the African coast; and, on the
voluptuous city of Palermo, with its amiable ladies and incessant
festivities--he was quite as eloquent as could reasonably be expected
from a smart post-captain of four-and-twenty.

We were all in a fool's paradise. For myself; I was enraptured. I was
continually making extracts from Horace, Virgil, and other school-books,
that I still carried with me, which referred, in the least, to those
places that we were at all likely to see. But visions of this land of
promise, of this sea, flowing with gentle waves and rich prizes, were
soon dispersed before a sad reality, that, without the aid of the biting
weather, now made most of the officers and men look blue, so soon as our
anchors had nipped the ground of the Green Island. We found ourselves
in the middle of a convoy of more than two hundred vessels of all
descriptions, that the experienced immediately knew to be West Indiamen.

The sarcastic glee with which Captain Reud rubbed his skinny, yellow
hands, when he ordered additional sentries, and a boat to row guard
round the ship from sunset to sunrise, weather permitting, to prevent
desertion, gave me a strong impression of the malignity of his
disposition. Certainly, the officers, from the first lieutenant
downwards, looked, when under the influence of the first surprise, about
as sage as we may conceive did those seven wise men of Gotham, who put
to sea in a bowl. Some of them had even exchanged into the ship, for
certain unlawful considerations, because she was so fine a frigate, and
the captain possessed so much interest, being a very near and dear
relation of the then treasurer of the navy. With this interest they
thought, of course, that he would have the selection of his own station.
And so he had. They either did not know, or had forgotten, that
Captain Reud was a West Indian creole, and that he had large patrimonial
estates in Antigua.

"Not loud but deep," were the curses in the gun-room, but both "loud and
deep" were those in the midshipman's berth, for the denizens thereof
were never proverbial for the niceties of their expressions, when the
apalling certainty broke on the comminators, of three years' roasting in
the West Indies, with accompaniments of misgivings about Yel