While we were cruising off the Crimea we were enveloped by a fog for six days early in May, and hearing guns signalling as we thought an order to anchor, we let go our stream anchor in 89 fathoms.[13] We rang bells and fired muskets every half-hour, but it was so calm that there was little danger of a collision even to ships under way. The dense fog caused much trouble and perplexity to feathered creatures, and our decks and rigging became for forty-eight hours the resting-place for numbers of pretty horned owlets. They were so exhausted as to allow anyone to pick them up, and many Midshipmen and sailors tried, though I believe ineffectually, to tame them. One of my messmates died at this time from erysipelas in the face. Three nights before his death I stopped him going overboard, when he tried in a fit of delirium to drown himself. He had sent for me previously in the middle watch to tell me to make his coffee, which I had been in the habit of doing at two o’clock in the morning. We were friends in spite of a punishment he gave me, the marks of which I carry now, fifty years after the event. When we were on our passage from England to the East, I remarked on one of his unpleasant habits at table, which all the youngsters in the gunroom--about twenty-five in number--resented; I was, I admit, very impertinent. He came round to my side of the table, and lifting me from the seat, put me on the stern-sheets locker; then, sitting on my chest, he took my hand, and bent the tip of the little finger nail down till the nail bled copiously at the root.