As I write as much for the instruction of my readers as for their amusement, I wish to impress upon them, if they are themselves, or if they know any that are, going to enter into the navy, the necessity, in the first instance, of showing or recommending a proper spirit. Never let the _debutant_ regard how young or how feeble he may be--he must make head against the first insult--he must avenge the first hoax. No doubt he will be worsted, and get a good beating; but that one will save him from many hundreds hereafter, and, perhaps, the necessity of fighting a mortal duel. Your certain defeat will be forgotten in the admiration of the spirit that provoked the contest. And remember, that the person who hoaxes you is always in the wrong, and it depends only upon yourself to heap that ridicule upon him that was intended for your own head; to say nothing of the odium that must attach to him for the cruelty, the cowardice, and the meanness of fighting with a lad weaker than himself. This I will enforce by a plain fact that happened to myself. A tall, consequential, thirty-years-old master's mate, threatened to beat me, after the manner that oldsters are accustomed to beat youngsters. I told him, that if he struck me, I would strike again as long as I had strength to stand, or power to lift my hand. He laughed, and struck me. I retaliated; it is true that I got a sound thrashing; but it was my first and last, and my tyrant got both his eyes well blackened, his cheek swollen--and was altogether so much defaced, that he was forced to hide himself in the sick-list for a fortnight. The story could not be told well for him, but it told for me gloriously; indeed, he felt so much annoyed by the whole affair, that he went and asked leave to go and mess with the gunner, fairly stating to the captain that he could not run the risk of keeping order--for he was our caterer--if he had to fight a battle every time he had to enforce it. But I cannot too much caution youngsters against having recourse, in their self-defence, to deadly weapons. I am sorry to say, it was too common when I was in the navy. It is un-English and assassin-like. It rarely keeps off the tyrant; the knife, the dirk, or whatever else may be the instrument, is almost invariably forced from the young bravo's hand, and the thrashing that he afterwards gets is pitiless, and the would-be stabber finds no voice lifted in his favour. He also gains the stigma of cowardice, and the bad reputation of being malignant and revengeful. Indeed, so utterly futile is the drawing of murderous instruments in little affrays of this sort, that, though I have known them displayed hundreds of times, yet I never knew a single wound to have been inflicted--though many a heavy beating has followed the atrocious display. By all means, let my young friends avoid it.