cult, as well as most dangerous, to attempt
to prove it. It may be asked why I did not quit the ship, after having
been aware of the character of the captain, and the enmity which he bore
to me. In reply, I can only say that I did often think of it, talked
over the subject with my messmates, but they persuaded me to remain,
and, as I was a first lieutenant, and knew that any successful action
would, in all probability, insure my promotion, I determined, to use a
nautical expression, to rough it out, and not throw away the only chance
which I now had of obtaining my rank as commander.

[Footnote 1: Marines.]

Chapter LVII

News from home not very agreeable, although the reader may laugh--We
arrive at Portsmouth, where I fall in with my old acquaintance, Mrs
Trotter--We sail with a convoy for the Baltic.

I had written to my sister Ellen, giving her an account of all that had
passed, and mentioning the character of the captain, and his apparent
intimacy with my uncle. I received an answer from her, telling me that
she had discovered, from a very communicative old maiden lady, that
Captain Hawkins was an illegitimate son of my uncle, by a lady with whom
he had been acquainted about the time that he was in the army. I
immediately conceived the truth, that my uncle had pointed me out to him
as an object of his vengeance, and that Captain Hawkins was too dutiful
and too dependent a son not to obey him. The state of my father was more
distressing than ever, but there was something very ludicrous in his
fancies. He had fancied himself a jackass, and had brayed for a week,
kicking the old nurse in the stomach, so as to double her up like a
hedgehog. He had taken it into his head that he was a pump; and, with
one arm held out as a spout, he had obliged the poor old nurse to work
the other up and down for hours together. At another time, he had an
idea that he was a woman in labour, and they were obliged to give him a
strong dose of calomel, and borrow a child of six years old from a
neighbour, to make him believe that he was delivered. He was perfectly
satisfied, although the child was born to him in cloth trousers, and a
jacket with three rows of sugar-loaf buttons. Aye, said he, it was those
buttons which hurt my side so much. In fact, there was a string of
strange conceptions of this kind that had accumulated, so as to drive my
poor sister almost mad; and sometimes his ideas would be attended with a
very heavy expe