The next day, Nelson tried to distinguish himself. While washing decks, he caught the youngest Paddy fairly, and availed himself of the opportunity to avenge former failures so effectually that the boy had not a joke left in him. His fellow-stowaway was next made to regret ever having chosen the ‘Windermere’ to escape from the miseries inseparable from Liverpool poverty. Before many minutes Nelson was dancing about me, and wounding me in many a vulnerable point; and then, aspiring for bigger game, he affected to feel outraged at the conduct of the man at the wheel, and proceeded to relieve himself by clouting and kicking the poor fellow, until the bright day must have appeared like a starry sky to him. Labouring under the notion that Liverpool sailors needed the most ferocious discipline, our two mates seldom omitted a chance to prove to them that they were resolved to follow every detail of the code, and to promote their efficiency; but, when about four days from the mouth of the Mississippi, they suddenly abstained from physical violence, and except by intermittent fits of mild swearing, and mordant sarcasm, they discontinued all efforts at the improvement of the men. The day before we arrived at the Balize, the mates astonished me by their extravagant praise of those they had so cruelly mauled and beaten. They called them ‘Jolly Tars,’ ‘Yankee Boys’ (a very high compliment), ‘Ocean heroes,’ etc., etc. Bully Waters exhibited his brilliantly white teeth in broad smiles, and Nelson gushed, and was jovially ebullient. I heard one sailor remark upon this sudden change of demeanour in them, that the mates knew when to ‘’bout face’ and sing a new tune; and that old hands could tell how near they were to the levee by the way Yankee mates behaved, and that there was no place so unwholesome for bullies as the New Orleans levee. Another sailor was of the opinion that the mates were more afraid of being hauled up before the court; he had often seen their like,--‘hellians at sea, and sweet as molasses near port.’