The passage ended at last, and New York was reached, none too soon for all on board. The day after arrival, the crew came to the ship to be paid off, and Brock called the mate aside and made this startling speech: "Mr. Smith, I want to beg your pardon for the way I behaved on this voyage. You're the kindest man ever I sailed with, and I know I ought to be ashamed of myself. I can show you the marks on my head where the last mate I was with split it open with a belaying pin, and I deserved it too. You'd have done right if you had served me the same way. What would my good old mother have said if she had known what a wretch I have been! She used to pray with me, and beg me to be a good man. Now that she's dead, her words sometimes haunt me, and I have made up my mind that I'll be a different man for the rest of my life." A tear stood in his eye, and good Mr. Smith took his hand and said, "I don't bear you no ill-will, Brock. I don't harbor malice towards nobody living. If a man should cut my throat, I believe I'd forgive him the next minute." As he turned away, he caught a whiff of Brock's breath, and the suspicion came sadly to his mind that this repentance was not so much the result of piety as of whiskey. This story reminds me of a little incident that occurred in Bombay when I was mate of the "Lizzie Oakford." There were two English ships anchored, one on each side of us. It was a calm morning, and we could hear some of the words spoken on board these vessels. A little after breakfast our attention was attracted to the ship on the port side, by the sound of angry voices. The captain was having an altercation with some of his crew, and very soon passed from words to blows. He "ended" four or five of them over, and with every stroke of his fist we could hear him swear about the Act of Parliament. In the course of half an hour we heard a row on board the ship on the starboard side, and looking towards her we saw a number of her crew on the poop-deck. One of the sailors had seized hold of the mate's coat-tail, and was whirling him around in a circle, while another, with a folded strip of canvas, belabored his back every time he flew past. Our second mate was so indignant at this insult to his cloth that he wanted to board the vessel and fight the sailors on his own account, but he said he should want to "lick the mate too." "There," said he, "are the two extremes, and we are the middle. In one ship the officers abuse the sailors, and in the other the sailors abuse the officers. Here there hasn't been much of either yet awhile, though I think the old shell-backs have got a little the best of it."