A similar rapidity attends the performance of every duty. The word of command is given in the same manner, and its prompt obedience enforced by the same unceremonious rope’s-end. To skulk is therefore next to impossible; the least tardiness is rebuked by the cry of “Hurrah my hearty! bear a hand! heave along! heave along!” This system of driving is far from being agreeable; it perpetually reminds you of your want of liberty; it makes you feel, sometimes, as if the hardest crust, the most ragged garments, with the freedom of your own native hills, would be preferable to John Bull’s “beef and duff,” joined as it is with the rope’s-end of the driving boatswain. We had one poor fellow, an Irishman, named Billy Garvy, who felt very uneasy and unhappy. He was the victim of that mortifying system of impressment, prevalent in Great Britain in time of war. He came on board perfectly unacquainted with the mysteries of sea life. One of his first inquiries was, where he should find his bed, supposing they slept on shipboard on beds the same as on shore. His messmates, with true sailor roguishness, sent him to the boatswain. “And where shall I find a bed, sir?” asked he of this rugged son of the ocean. The boatswain looked at him very contemptuously for a moment, then, rolling his lump of tobacco into another apartment of his ample mouth, replied, “Have you got a knife?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, stick it into the softest plank in the ship, and take that for a bed!” Poor fellow! what was sport for others was pain to him. He had been used to kind treatment at home. After he had received his hammock, when turning out in the morning, with the boatswain’s mates at his heels, he used to exclaim, “When I was at home, I would walk in my father’s garden in the morning, until the maid would come and say, ‘William, will you come to your ta, or your coffee ta, or your chocolarata?’ But, oh! the case is altered now; it’s nothing but bear a hand, lash and carry. Oh, dear!” I confess that Billy Garvy was not the only one who contrasted the present with the past, or who found the balance to be greatly in favor of the former. I often looked back to the village of Bladen, and thought how preferable would be the bright hearth-side and pleasant voices of that quiet home, to the profane, rough, uncomfortable life we led on shipboard. As these reflections were anything but pleasurable, I banished them as quickly as possible, with a determination to be as happy as I could in my station of servant to the surgeon of His Britannic Majesty’s frigate _Macedonian_: a resolution which I commend to all lads, who, like me, are foolish enough to quit the quiet scenes of a native village, for the noisy, profane atmosphere of a man of war.