When I said to myself, "I have done those things that I ought not to have done, and have _left undone_ those things that I _ought_ to have done," I was startled at the measure of sin that I had confessed. I think that I was contrite. I resolved to amend. I gradually flung off the hardness that my late life of recklessness had been encrusting upon my heart. I softened towards all who had ever shown me kindness; and, in my mind, I faithfully retraced the last time that I had ever walked to church with her whom I had been fond to deem my mother. These silent devotions, and these home-harmonised thoughts, first chastened, and then made me very, very happy. At last, I felt the spirit of blissful serenity so strong upon me, that, forgetting for a moment to what ridicule I might subject myself; I began to sing aloud that morning hymn that I had never omitted, for so many years, until I had joined the service-- "Awake, my soul, and with the sun." And I confess that I sang the whole of the first verse. I am sure that no one will sneer at all this. The good will not--the wicked dare not. The worst of us, even if his sin have put on the armour of infidelity, must remember the time when he believed in a God of love, and loved to believe it. For the sake of that period of happiness, he will not, cannot condemn the expression of feelings, and the manifestation of a bliss that he has himself voluntarily, and, if he would ask his own heart, and record the answer, miserably, cast away. However, it will be long before I again trouble the reader with anything so _outre_ as that which I have just written. Many were the days of error, and the nights of sin, that passed before I again even looked into my own heart. The feelings with which I made my mast-head orisons are gone and for ever. How often, and with what bitterness of spirit, have I said, "Would that I had then died!" If there is mercy in heaven--I say it with reverence--I feel assured that then to have passed away, would have been but the closing of the eyes on earth to awaken immediately in the lap of a blissful immortality. Since then the world's foot has been upon my breast, and I have writhed under the opprobrious weight; and, with sinful pride and self-trust, have, though grovelling in the dust, returned scorn for scorn, and injury for injury--even wrong for wrong. I have been a sad dog, and that's the truth; but-- I have been forced to hunt, and to house, and to howl with dogs much worse than myself; and that's equally true. "Maintopmast-head there," squeaked out the very disagreeable treble of Captain Reud, who had then come on deck, as I was trolling, "Shake off dull sloth, and early rise." "Mr Rattlin, what do you say?" "Ay, ay, sir." "Ay, ay, sir! what were you saying? How many sails are there in sight?" "I can't make out, sir." "Why not? Have you counted them?"