However, I must retrograde. It may seem surprising that I have made so little mention of my messmates, for it would seem that, to a midshipman, the affairs and characters of midshipmen would be paramount. To me they were not so, for reasons that I have before stated. Besides, our berth was like an eastern caravanserai, or the receiving-room of a pest-house. They all died, were promoted, or went into other ships, excepting two and myself; who returned to England. It must not be supposed that we were without young gentlemen; sometimes we had our full complement, sometimes half. Fresh ones came, and they died, and so on. Before I had time to form friendships with them, or to study their characters, they took their long sleep beneath the palisades, or were thrown overboard in their hammocks. This was much the case with the wardroom officers. The first lieutenant, the doctor, and the purser, were the only original ones that returned to England with us. The mortality among the assistant-surgeons was dreadful; they messed with us. Indeed, I have no recollection of the names, or even the persons, of the majority of those with whom I ate, and drank, and acted, they being so prone to prove this a transitory world. We were tolerably healthy till the capture of Saint Domingo; when, being obliged to convey a regiment of French soldiers to the prisons at Port Royal, they brought the fever in its worst form on board; and, notwithstanding every remedial measure that the then state of science could suggest, we never could eradicate the germs of it. The men were sent on board of a hulk, the vessel thoroughly cleansed and fumigated, and finally, we were ordered as far north as New Providence; but all these means were ineffectual, for, at intervals, nearly regular, the fever would again appear, and men and officers die. Hitherto, I had escaped. The only attack to which I was subjected took place in the capstan-house, for so the place was called where we were bivouacked during the heaving down of the ship. I record it, not that my conduct under the disease may be imitated, but on account of the singularity of the access, and the rapidity of the cure. I had to tow, from Port Royal up to Kingston, a powder-boy, and, through some misconduct of the coxswain, the boat's awning had been left behind. Six or seven hours under a sun, vertical at noon, through the hottest part of the day, and among the swamps and morasses, so luxuriant in vegetable productions, that separate Port Royal from Kingston, is a good ordeal by which to try a European constitution. For the first time, my stamina seemed inclined to succumb before it.