d turn before now. If it
was not for these pistols I should not have been in the land of the
living: some day I'll tell you how it happened. Well, we are likely to
have some desperate work to-night, and no one can tell whose lot it will
be to fall. That reminds me, Mr Merry, I have written a letter to my
wife, and I will intrust it to you. That is more than I would do to any
other midshipman in the ship. She is a charming person--every inch a
lady, and a lady of rank, too. One thing I must charge you--do not
speak of me as a boatswain. She has no idea that I hold so subordinate
a rank. She believes that I am an officer, and so I am; only I am a
warrant and not a commissioned officer. Just tell her that I died
fighting bravely for my country. Her name--for she is not called Mrs
Johnson--and address you will find within that enclosure. If I come
back, you will restore it to me as it is; if I fall, you will know what
to do with it."

I thanked Mr Johnson very much for the confidence he reposed in me, but
told him that I had come for the very purpose of asking him to let me go
in his boat.

"You, Mr Merry?" exclaimed the boatswain. "You'll be made into
mince-meat--cut to atoms--annihilated. It's no child's play, that
cutting-out work we are going on, let me tell you. Time enough when you
are bigger."

"But I want to go, that I may know how to do it," I argued; "I have come
to sea to learn to be a sailor and an officer, and the captain says we
should lose no opportunity of gaining knowledge; and I could not find a
better occasion than the present for gaining an insight into what, I
fancy, is of very considerable importance."

I went on for some time arguing in this way, and coaxing the boatswain.

"Well! well! I cannot give you leave, youngster--you know that; but I
have heard of boys stowing themselves away under a sail in the bows of a
boat, and coming out to play their part right manfully when the time for
action had arrived. I am to have the pinnace, you know."

"Thank you--thank you," I exclaimed, overwhelmed with gratitude at the
enormous favour done me by the boatswain, of allowing me to run a
considerable chance of getting knocked on the head.

"Don't say any more about it, Mr Merry," said Mr Johnson; "I always
liked you; and I couldn't do for my own son, if I had one, more than I
would do for you." The boatswain forgot to ask for his letter back, so
I locked it up in my desk, after I had wri