The great difficulty was to renew my application to study, after many months of idleness.  This, however, I accomplished, and after having been one year at sea, kept a good reckoning and sent in my day’s work to the captain.  The want of instruction which I first felt in the study of navigation, proved in the end of great service to me:  I was forced to study more intensely, and to comprehend the principles on which I founded my theory, so that I was prepared to prove by mathematical demonstration, what others could only assert who worked by “inspection.”

The pride of surpassing my seniors, and the hope of exposing their ignorance, stimulated me to inquiry, and roused me to application.  The books which I had reported lost to my father, were handed out from the bottom of my chest, and read with avidity:  many others I borrowed from the officers, whom I must do the justice to say, not only lent them with cheerfulness, but offered me the use of their cabin to study in.

Thus I acquired a taste for reading.  I renewed my acquaintance with the classic authors.  Horace and Virgil, licentious but alluring, drove me back to the study of Latin, and fixed in my mind a knowledge of the dead languages, at the expense of my morals.  Whether the exchange were profitable or not, is left to wiser heads than mine to decide; my business is with facts only.

Thus, while the ungenerous malice of the elder midshipmen thought to have injured me by leaving me in ignorance, they did me the greatest possible service, by throwing me on my own resources.  I continued on pretty nearly the same terms with my shipmates to the last.  With some of the mess-room officers I was still in disgrace, and was always disliked by the oldsters in my own mess; with the younger midshipmen and the foremast men I was a favourite.  I was too proud to be a tyrant, and the same feeling prevented my submitting to tyranny.  As I increased in strength and stature, I showed more determined resistance to arbitrary power:  an occasional turn-up with boys of my own size (for the best friends will quarrel), and the supernumerary midshipmen sent on board for a passage, generally ended in establishing my dominion or insuring for me a peaceable neutrality.

I became a scientific pugilist, and now and then took a brush with an oldster; and although overpowered, yet I displayed so much prowess, that my enemies became cautious how they renewed a struggle which they perceived became daily more arduous; till at last, like the lion’s whelp, my play ceased to be a joke, and I was left to enjoy that tranquillity, which few found it safe or convenient to disturb.  By degrees the balance of power was fairly established, and even Murphy was awed into civil silence.