grade a man by corporal punishment, to ruin his
character, and render him an object of abhorrence and contempt, in the
absence of even bare presumptive evidence, was an act of cruelty and
injustice, which could excite but one feeling; and, from that day, the
man who would have gloried in dying for his country, became a
discontented, gloomy, and dangerous subject.

The above effect would have been produced in any man; but to Peters,
whose previous history we have yet to narrate, death itself would have
been preferable. His heart did not break, but it swelled with
contending passions, till it was burst and riven with wounds never to be
cicatrised. Suffering under the most painful burthen that can oppress a
man who values reputation, writhing with the injustice of accusation
when innocent, of conviction without proof, and of punishment unmerited,
it is not to be wondered at that Peters took the earliest opportunity of
deserting from the ship.

There is a particular feeling pervading animal nature, from which man
himself is not exempt. Indeed, with all his boasted reason, man still
inherits too many of the propensities of the brute creation. I refer to
that disposition which not only inclines us to feel satisfaction at
finding we have companions in misfortune, but too often stimulates us to
increase the number by our own exertions. From the stupendous elephant,
down to the smallest of the feathered tribe, all will act as a decoy to
their own species, when in captivity themselves; and, in all compulsory
service, which may be considered a species of captivity, man proves that
he is imbued with the same propensity. Seamen that have been pressed
themselves into the navy, are invariably the most active in pressing
others; and both soldiers and sailors have a secret pleasure in
recapturing a deserter, even at the very time when they are watching an
opportunity to desert themselves.

The bonds of friendship seem destroyed when this powerful and brutal
feeling is called into action; and, as has frequently occurred in the
service, before and since, the man who was selected by Peters as his
most intimate friend, the man with whom he had consulted, and to whom he
had confided his plans for desertion, gave information of the retreat of
his wife and child, from which place Peters was not likely to be very
distant; and thus, with the assistance of this, his dearest friend, the
master-at-arms and party in quest of him succeeded in