oiling point, stepped aft, and with
apparent calmness re-stated the grievance. The captain drew a loaded
pistol from his belt; the sailor struck up his hand; and, as the bullet
whistled through the rigging above, he grappled with him, and disarmed
him in a trice. The crew rose, and in a few minutes the ship was all
their own. But having failed to calculate on such a result, they knew
not what to do with their charge; and, acting under the advice of their
new leader, who felt 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
manoeuvre 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 marlingspik