He returned to us with a most woe-begone countenance.  I never saw a poor creature in greater mental torment.  I felt for him the more, as I knew not how soon his case might be my own.  Another was called, and soon returned with no better success; and the description he gave of the bullying conduct of the youngest passing captain was such as to damp the spirits, and enough to stultify minds so inexperienced as ours, and where so much depended on our success.  This hint was, however, of great use to me.  Theory, I found, was the rock on which they had split; and in this part of my profession, I knew my powers, and was resolved not to be bowled out by the young captain.  But while I thus resolved, a third candidate was returned to us re infecta; and this was a young man on whose talents I could have relied:  I began to doubt myself.  When the fourth came out with a smiling face, and told us he had passed, I took a little breath; but even this comfort was snatched from me in a moment, by his saying that one of the passing captains was a friend of his father.  Here then was solved an enigma; for this fellow, during the short time I was in his company, gave proof of being no better than a simpleton.

On my own name being called, I felt a flutter about the heart which I did not feel in action, or in the hurricane, or when, in a case more desperate than either, I jumped overboard at Spithead, to swim to my dear Eugenia.  “Powers of Impudence, as well as Algebra,” said I, “lend me your aid, or I am undone.”  In a moment the cabin door flew open, the sentinel closed it after me, and I found myself in the presence of this most awful triumvirate.  I felt very like Daniel in the lions’ den.  I was desired to take a chair, and a short discussion ensued between the judges, which I neither heard nor wished to hear:  but while it lasted, I had time to survey my antagonists from head to foot.  I encouraged myself to think that I was equal to one of them; and if I could only neutralise him, I thought I should very easily floor the other two.

One of these officers had a face like a painted pumpkin; and his hand, as it lay on the table, looked more like the fin of a turtle; the nails were bitten so close off, that the very remains of them seemed to have retreated into the flesh, for fear of farther depredation, which the other hand was at the moment suffering.  Thinks I to myself, “If ever I saw ‘lodgings to let, unfurnished,’ it is in that cocoa-nut, or pumpkin, or gourd of yours.”

The next captain to him was a little, thin, dark, dried up, shrivelled fellow, with keen eyes, and a sharp nose.  The midshipmen called him “Old Chili Vinegar,” or, “Old Hot and Sour.”  He was what we term a martinet.  He would keep a man two months on his black list, giving him a breech of a gun to polish and keep bright, never allowing him time to mend his clothes, or keep himself clean, while he was cleaning that which, for all the purposes of war, had better have been black.  He seldom flogged a man; but he tormented him into sullen discontent, by what he called “keeping the devil out of his mind.”  This little night-mare, who looked like a dried eel-skin, I soon found was the leader of the band.