e. He had entered the service when very young, and, being of
humble extraction, had not had any advantage of education. In person he
was short and thick-set, and having suffered severely from the small-pox
during his infancy, was by no means prepossessing in his outward
appearance.

The second-lieutenant, whose name was Price, was a good-looking young
man, who kept his watch and read Shakespeare. He was constantly
attempting to quote his favourite author; but, fortunately for those who
were not fond of quotations, his memory was very defective.

Mr Courtenay, the third-lieutenant, was a little, bilious-looking
personage, who, to use the master's phraseology, was never quite happy
unless he was damned miserable. He was full of misfortunes and
grievances, and always complaining or laughing, at his real or imaginary
disasters; but his complaint would often end in a laugh, or his mirth
terminate in a whine. You never could exactly say whether he was in
joke or in earnest. There was such a serio-comic humour about him that
one side of his countenance would express pleasure, while the other
indicated vexation. There seemed to be a perpetual war, in his
composition, of good-humour _versus_ bile, both of which were most
unaccountably blended in the same temperament.

According to seniority, Mr Pearce, the master, is the next to be
introduced to the reader: in external appearance, a rough, hard-headed
north-countryman; but, with an unpromising exterior, he was a man with
sense and feeling. He had every requisite for his situation: his nerves
were like a chain-cable; he was correct and zealous in his duty; and a
great favourite of the captain's, who was his countryman. He was about
fifty years of age, a married man, with a large family.

The surgeon, whose name was Macallan, was also most deservedly a great
favourite with Captain M---; indeed, there was a friendship between
them, grown out of long acquaintance with each other's worth,
inconsistent with, and unusual, in a service where the almost despotic
power of the superior renders the intimacy of the inferior similar to
the smoothing with your hand the paw of a lion, whose fangs, in a moment
of caprice, may be darted into your flesh. He was a slight-made, spare
man, of about thirty-five years of age, and had graduated and received
his diploma at Edinburgh,--an unusual circumstance at that period,
although the education in the service was so defective, that the med