ween the ropes, I perceived an aged seaman on his knees, his face
turned seaward, with closed eyes, buried in prayer. Softly rising, I
stole through a port-hole, and left the venerable worshipper alone.

He was a sheet-anchor-man, an earnest Baptist, and was well known, in
his own part of the ship, to be constant in his solitary devotions in
the _chains_. He reminded me of St. Anthony going out into the
wilderness to pray.

This man was captain of the starboard bow-chaser, one of the two long
twenty-four-pounders on the forecastle. In time of action, the command
of that iron Thalaba the Destroyer would devolve upon _him_. It would
be his business to "train" it properly; to see it well loaded; the
grape and cannister rammed home; also, to "prick the cartridge," "take
the sight," and give the word for the match-man to apply his wand;
bidding a sudden hell to flash forth from the muzzle, in wide
combustion and death.

Now, this captain of the bow-chaser was an upright old man, a sincere,
humble believer, and he but earned his bread in being captain of that
gun; but how, with those hands of his begrimed with powder, could he
break that _other_ and most peaceful and penitent bread of the Supper?
though in that hallowed sacrament, it seemed, he had often partaken
ashore. The omission of this rite in a man-of-war--though there is a
chaplain to preside over it, and at least a few communicants to
partake--must be ascribed to a sense of religious propriety, in the
last degree to be commended.

Ah! the best righteousness of our man-of-war world seems but an
unrealised ideal, after all; and those maxims which, in the hope of
bringing about a Millennium, we busily teach to the heathen, we
Christians ourselves disregard. In view of the whole present social
frame-work of our world, so ill adapted to the practical adoption of
the meekness of Christianity, there seems almost some ground for the
thought, that although our blessed Saviour was full of the wisdom of
heaven, yet his gospel seems lacking in the practical wisdom of
earth--in a due appreciation of the necessities of nations at times
demanding bloody massacres and wars; in a proper estimation of the
value of rank, title, and money. But all this only the more crowns the
divine consistency of Jesus; since Burnet and the best theologians
demonstrate, that his nature was not merely human--was not that of a
mere man of the world.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

THE HOSPITAL IN A MAN-