While we lay in Malta Harbour, my friend Murphy fell overboard one night, just after all the boats were hoisted in; he could not swim, and would have been drowned if I had not jumped overboard and held him up until a boat was lowered down to our assistance.  The officers and ship’s company gave me more credit for this action than I really deserved.  To have saved any person under such circumstances, they said, was a noble deed; but to risk my life for a man who had always, from my first coming into the ship, been my bitterest enemy, was more than they could have expected, and was undoubtedly the noblest revenge that I could have taken.  But they were deceived—­they knew me not:  it was my vanity, and the desire of oppressing my enemy under an intolerable weight of obligation, that induced me to rush to his rescue; moreover, as I stood on the gangway witnessing his struggles for life, I felt that I was about to lose all the revenge I had so long laid up in store; in short, I could not spare him, and only saved him, as a cat does a mouse, to torment him.

Murphy acknowledged his obligations, and said the terrors of death were upon him; but in a few days forgot all I had done for him, consummated his own disgrace, and raised my character on the ruins of his own.  On some frivolous occasion he threw a basin of dirty water in my face as I passed through the steerage; this was too good an opportunity to gratify my darling passion.  I had long watched for an occasion to quarrel with him; but as he had been ill during our passage from Gibraltar to Malta, I could not justify any act of aggression.  He had now recovered, and was in the plentitude of his strength, and I astonished him by striking the first blow.

A set-to followed; I brought up all my scientific powers in aid of my strength and the memory of former injuries.  I must do him the justice to say he never showed more game—­but he had everything to contend for; if I was beaten I was only where I was before, but with him the case would have been different.  A fallen tyrant has no friends.  Stung to madness by the successful hits I planted in his face, he lost his temper, while I was cool; he fought wildly, I stopped all his blows, and paid them with interest.  He stood forty-three rounds, and then gave in with his eyes bunged up, and his face so swollen and so covered with blood, as not to be known by his friends if he had had any.

I had hardly a mark; most of our midshipmen were absent in prizes; but the two seniors of our berth, an old master’s mate past promotion, and the surgeon’s assistant, who had held my wrist when I was cobbed, were present as the supporters of Murphy during the combat.  I always determined whenever I gained a battle to follow it up.  The shouts of victory resounded in the berth—­the youngsters joined with me in songs of triumph, and gave great offence to the trio.  The young Esculapius, a white-faced, stupid, pock-marked, unhealthy-looking man, was fool