I could relate many instances of injustice arising from precipitancy in awarding punishment; but the following anecdotes, for the accuracy of which I can vouch, seem sufficient to arrest the attention to good purpose.

Two men-of-war happened to be cruising in company:  one of them a line-of-battle ship, bearing an admiral’s flag; the other a small frigate.  One day, when they were sailing quite close to each other, the signal was made from the large to the small ship to chase in a particular direction, implying that a strange sail was seen in that quarter.  The look-out man at the maintop mast-head of the frigate was instantly called down by the captain, and severely punished on the spot, for not having discovered and reported the stranger before the flag ship had made the signal to chase.

The unhappy sufferer, who was a very young hand, unaccustomed to be aloft, had merely taken his turn at the mast head with the rest of the ship’s company, and could give no explanation of his apparent neglect.  Before it was too late, however, the officer of the watch ventured to suggest to the captain, that possibly the difference of height between the masts of the two ships might have enabled the look-out man on board the admiral to discover the stranger, when it was physically impossible, owing to the curvature of the earth, that she could have been seen on board the frigate.  No attention, however, was paid to this remark, and a punishment due only to crime, or to a manifest breach of discipline, was inflicted.

The very next day, the same officer, whose remonstrance had proved so ineffectual, saw the look-out man at the flag ship’s mast-head again pointing out at a strange sail.  The frigate chanced to be placed nearly in the direction indicated; consequently she must have been somewhat nearer to the stranger than the line-of-battle ship was.  But the man stationed at the frigate’s mast-head declared he could distinguish nothing of any stranger.  Upon this the officer of the watch sent up the captain of the maintop, an experienced and quick-sighted seaman, who, having for some minutes looked in vain in every direction, asserted positively that there was nothing in sight from that elevation.  It was thus rendered certain, or at all events highly probable, that the precipitate sentence of the day before had been unjust; for, under circumstances even less favourable, it appeared that the poor fellow could not by possibility have seen the stranger, for not first detecting which he was punished!

I must give the conclusion of this painful story in the words of my informant, the officer of the deck:—­“I reported all this to the captain of the ship, and watched the effect.  He seemed on the point of acknowledging that his heart smote him; but pride prevailed, and it was barely an ejaculation that escaped.  So much for angry feelings getting the better of judgment!”

The following anecdote will help to relieve the disagreeable impression caused by the incident just related, without obliterating the salutary reflections which it seems calculated to trace on the mind of every well-disposed officer.