d and water from the scuppers fairly turned
me sick. I turned away, when Mr. Kennedy, our gunner, a good steady
old Scotchman, with whom I was a bit of a favourite, came up to
me--"Mr. Cringle, the captain has sent for you; poor Mr. Johnstone
is fast going, he wants to see you."

I knew my young messmate had been wounded, for I had seen him carried
below after the frigate's second broad-side; but the excitement of a
boy, who had never smelled powder fired in anger before, had kept me
on deck the whole night, and it never once occurred to me to ask for
him, until the old gunner spoke.

I hastened down to our small confined berth, and there I saw a sight
that quickly brought me to myself. Poor Johnstone was indeed going; a
grape shot had struck him, and torn his belly open. There he lay in his
bloody hammock on the deck, pale and motionless as if he had already
departed, except a slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, and
a convulsive contraction and distension of his nostrils. His brown
ringlets still clustered over his marble forehead, but they were
drenched in the cold sweat of death. The surgeon could do nothing for
him, and had left him; but our old captain--bless him for it--I little
expected, from his usual crusty bearing, to find him so employed--had
knelt by his side, and, whilst he read from the Prayer Book one of those
beautiful petitions in our church service to Almighty God, for mercy
to the passing soul of one so young, and so early cut off, the tears
trickled down the old man's cheeks, and filled the furrows worn in them
by the washing up of many a salt spray. On the other side of his narrow
bed, fomenting the rigid muscles of his neck and chest, sat Mistress
Connolly, one of three women on board--a rough enough creature, heaven
knows, in common weather; but her stifled sobs showed that the mournful
sight had stirred up all the woman within her. She had opened the bosom
of the poor boy's shirt, and untying the ribbon that fastened a small
gold crucifix round his neck, she placed it in his cold hand. The young
midshipman was of a respectable family in Limerick, her native place,
and a Catholic--another strand of the cord that bound her to him. When
the captain finished reading, he bent over the departing youth, and
kissed his cheek. "Your young messmate just now desired to see you,
Mr. Cringle, but it is too late, he is insensible and dying." Whilst he
spoke, a strong shiver passed through the boy's