ed
within very narrow limits in their game. Accordingly, some mount the
rigging to shower down their cascades, while others squirt the
fire-engine from unseen corners upon the head of the unsuspecting
passer-by. And if it so chances (I say chances) that any one of the
"commissioned nobs" of the ship shall come in the way of these
explosions, it is served out to him like a thunder-storm, "all
accidentally," of course. Well; what is he to do? He feels that he has
indiscreetly trusted himself too far; and even if he has not actually
passed the prescribed line, still he was much too near it, and the
offence is perhaps unintentional. At all events, it is of too trifling
a nature; and, under the peculiar circumstances of the moment, to make
a complaint to the captain would be ridiculous. Having, therefore, got
his jacket well wet, and seeing the ready means of revenging himself
in kind, he snatches up a bucket, and, forgetting his dignity, hurls
the contents in the face of the mid who has given him a sousing but
two seconds before! From that moment his commission goes for nothing,
and he becomes, for the time being, one of the biggest Billy-boys
amongst them. The captain observing him in this mess, shrugs his
shoulders, walks aft, muttering, "It's all your own fault, Mr.
Hailtop; you've put yourself amongst these mad younkers; now see how
they'll handle you!"

Nothing, I confess, now looks to me more completely out of character
with our well-starched discipline than a "staid lieutenant" romping
about the booms, skulling up the rigging, blowing the grampus, and
having it blown upon him by a parcel of rattle-pated reefers. But I
remember well in the Volage being myself so gradually seduced by this
animating spectacle of fun, that, before I knew where I was, I had
crossed the rope laid on the deck as a boundary between order and
disorder, and received a bucket of cold water in each ear, while the
spout of a fire-engine, at the distance of two feet, was playing full
in my eyes. On turning my head round to escape these cataracts, and
to draw breath, a tar-brush was rammed half-way down my throat!

Far different was the scene, and very different, of course, my
deportment, four or five years afterwards on the same spot, when,
instead of being the junior lieutenant, I was the great gun of all,
the mighty master-nob of the whole party, that is to say, the captain
himself. I was then in command of the Lyra, a ten-gun sloop-of-war;
a