Having had my frolic, I came out, and voluntarily surrendered myself to my enemies, from whom I received the same mercy, in proportion, that a Russian does from a Turk.  Dripping wet, cold, and covered with mud, I was first shown to the boys as an aggregate of all that was bad in nature; a lecture was read to them on the enormity of my offence, and solemn denunciations of my future destiny closed the discourse.  The shivering fit produced by the cold bath was relieved by as sound a flogging as could be inflicted, while two ushers held me; but no effort of theirs could elicit one groan or sob from me, my teeth were clenched in firm determination of revenge:  with this passion my bosom glowed, and my brain was on fire.  The punishment, though dreadfully severe, had one good effect—­it restored my almost suspended animation; and I strongly recommend the same remedy being applied to all young ladies and gentlemen who, from disappointed love or other such trifling causes, throw themselves into the water.  Had the miserable usher been treated after this prescription, he might have escaped a cold and rheumatic fever which had nearly consigned him to a country churchyard, in all probability to reappear at the dissecting-room of St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

About this time Johnny Pagoda, who had been two years at sea, came to the school to visit his brother and schoolfellows.  I pumped this fellow to tell me all he knew:  he never tried to deceive me, or to make a convert.  He had seen enough of a midshipman’s life, to know that a cockpit was not paradise; but he gave me clear and ready answers to all my questions.  I discovered that there was no schoolmaster in the ship, and that the midshipmen were allowed a pint of wine a day.  A man-of-war, and the gallows, they say, refuse nothing; and as I had some strong presentiment from recent occurrences, that if I did not volunteer for the one, I should, in all probability, be pressed for the other, I chose the lesser evil of the two; and having made up my mind to enter the glorious profession, I shortly after communicated my intention to my parents.

From the moment I had come to this determination, I cared not what crime I committed, in hopes of being expelled from the school.  I wrote scurrilous letters, headed a mutiny, entered into a league with the other boys to sink, burn and destroy, and do all the mischief we could.  Tom Crauford had the master’s child to dry nurse:  he was only two years old:  Tom let him fall, not intentionally, but the poor child was a cripple in consequence of it for life.  This was an accident which under any other circumstances we should have deplored, but to us it was almost a joke.