forget the manners of a gentleman as to give the lie direct to one of his messmates, he shall be fined one dollar.” This fine, it must be observed, was intended purely as a propitiation to the offended dignity of the mess, and was quite independent of the personal arrangements which, on such occasions, generally took place in the cock-pit outside. These battles royal were fought across a chest,—I don’t mean with pistols, but with good honest fisty-cuffs. The only difficulty attending this method of settling such matters consisted in the shifts to which the parties were compelled to resort, to conceal the black eyes which, in most cases, were the result of these single combats. It would, of course, have been quite incorrect in the commanding officer to have overlooked such proceedings—even supposing the parties to retain a sufficiency of optics to do their duty. The usual resource was to trust to the good-nature of the surgeon, who put the high contending parties on the sick list, and wrote against their names “Contusion;” an entry he might certainly make with a safe conscience! This innocent way of settling disputes was all very well, so long as the mids were really and truly boys; but there came, in process of time, a plaguy awkward age, when they began to fancy themselves men, and when they were very apt to take it into their heads that, on such occasions as that just alluded to, their dignity, as officers and gentlemen, would be compromised by beating one another about the face and eyes across a chest, and otherwise contusing one another, according to the most approved fashion of the cock-pit. Youths, at this intermediate age, are called Hobbledehoys, that is, neither man nor boy. And as powder and ball act with equal efficacy against these high-spirited fellows as against men of more experience, fatal duels do sometimes take place even amongst midshipmen. I was once present at a very foolish affair of this kind, which, though it happily ended in smoke, was so exceedingly irregular in all its parts, that, had any one fallen, the whole party concerned would most probably have been hanged! A dispute arose between three of these young men, in the course of which, terms were bandied about, leaving a reproach such that only the ordeal of a duel, it was thought, could wipe out. It was late in the day when this quarrel took place; but as there was still light enough left to fire a shot, the party went on deck, and quietly asked leave to go on shore for a walk. I happened to be the only person in the birth at the time who was not engaged in the squabble, and so was pressed into the service of the disputants to act as second. There would have been nothing very absurd in all this, had there been another second besides me, or had there existed only one quarrel to settle—but between the three youths there were two distinct disputes!