mast in the article of ingenious ferocity.  The captain, of course, and, generally speaking, all the officers keep quite aloof, pocketing up their dignity with vast care, and ready, at a moment’s warning, to repress any undue familiarity.  As things proceed, however, one or two of the officers may possibly become so much interested in the skylarking scenes going forward as to approach a little too near, and laugh a little too loud, consistently with the preservation of the dignity of which they were so uncommonly chary at first starting.  It cannot be expected, and indeed is not required, that the chief actors in these wild gambols, stripped to the buff, and shying buckets of water at one another, should be confined within very narrow limits in their game.  Accordingly, some mount the rigging to shower down their cascades, while others squirt the fire-engine from unseen corners upon the head of the unsuspecting passer-by.  And if it so chances (I say chances) that any one of the “commissioned nobs” of the ship shall come in the way of these explosions, it is served out to him like a thunder-storm, “all accidentally,” of course.  Well; what is he to do?  He feels that he has indiscreetly trusted himself too far; and even if he has not actually passed the prescribed line, still he was much too near it, and the offence is perhaps unintentional.  At all events, it is of too trifling a nature; and, under the peculiar circumstances of the moment, to make a complaint to the captain would be ridiculous.  Having, therefore, got his jacket well wet, and seeing the ready means of revenging himself in kind, he snatches up a bucket, and, forgetting his dignity, hurls the contents in the face of the mid who has given him a sousing but two seconds before!  From that moment his commission goes for nothing, and he becomes, for the time being, one of the biggest Billy-boys amongst them.  The captain observing him in this mess, shrugs his shoulders, walks aft, muttering, “It’s all your own fault, Mr. Hailtop; you’ve put yourself amongst these mad younkers; now see how they’ll handle you!”

Nothing, I confess, now looks to me more completely out of character with our well-starched discipline than a “staid lieutenant” romping about the booms, skulling up the rigging, blowing the grampus, and having it blown upon him by a parcel of rattle-pated reefers.  But I remember well in the Volage being myself so gradually seduced by this animating spectacle of fun, that, before I knew where I was, I had crossed the rope laid on the deck as a boundary between order and disorder, and received a bucket of cold water in each ear, while the spout of a fire-engine, at the distance of two feet, was playing full in my eyes.  On turning my head round to escape these cataracts, and to draw breath, a tar-brush was rammed half-way down my throat!