We used to marvel much how he managed to point his sarcastic censure so exactly as to hit the precise fault we had been guilty of, and we resolved in future to keep out of its reach, as far as these eternal wet things went. Yet, in spite of all sorts of attention, the day seldom broke without some provoking article of dress making its fluttering appearance—though how on earth it got there, often baffled conjecture. Upon one occasion, my juvenile bile was fairly capsised, and having given warning, as I declared, for the hundred-and-fiftieth time, and all to no effect, I pulled out my knife, and cut the stops which tied a shirt to the jolly-boat’s tackle-fall. Had I proceeded no further, all would have been right and proper; but, in my zealous rage, I leaped beyond the lines of my duty, and fairly threw the offending garment overboard! Just as the sun peeped above the horizon, our most systematic of first lieutenants made his periodical appearance. I watched his eye as it glanced towards my department, and I chuckled a good deal, when I saw that my activity had baffled every attempt to detect a square inch of the forbidden drapery. The decks, however, were hardly swabbed up before I saw a scamp of a mizen-top-man, with his hat in one hand, and smoothing down the hair in front of his head with the other, while he shifted his balance from leg to leg, address himself to the first lieutenant, evidently in the act of lodging a complaint. In the next minute I was called down, and interrogated as to my proceedings. The fact of my having thrown the lad’s shirt overboard being admitted, I was desired to recompense him for his loss, by paying him the value in money—while he, in like manner, was punished for disobedience in hanging it up in so improper a situation. A common-place person would have stopped short there; but this judicious officer was of a different stamp—and I have often lamented, since those days, that he did not live to receive the grateful acknowledgments experience has taught me were his due, for this and many other lessons which at that time I could not justly appreciate. It was his practice every evening, just before going to bed, to give to the mate of the watch a written order of what he wished executed in the course of the night, or early in the morning; and many an injunction, it may be supposed, his little neatly-bound order-book contained against the particular kind of delinquency above noticed. On the present occasion, however, the night orders consisted of these words only:— “Mr. Hall is the only gentleman who attends to his duty on the poop.”