Once when I visited an English line-of-battle ship, the gunner's gang were fore and aft, polishing up the batteries, which, according to the Admiral's fancy, had been painted white as snow.

Fidgeting round the great thirty-two-pounders, and making stinging remarks at the sailors and each other, they reminded one of a swarm of black wasps, buzzing about rows of white headstones in a church-yard.
Now, there can be little doubt, that their being so much among the guns is the very thing that makes a gunner's gang so cross and quarrelsome.
Indeed, this was once proved to the satisfaction of our whole company of main-top-men.

A fine top-mate of ours, a most merry and companionable fellow, chanced to be promoted to a quarter-gunner's berth.

A few days afterward, some of us main-top-men, his old comrades, went to pay him a visit, while he was going his regular rounds through the division of guns allotted to his care.

But instead of greeting us with his usual heartiness, and cracking his pleasant jokes, to our amazement, he did little else but scowl; and at last, when we rallied him upon his ill-temper, he seized a long black rammer from overhead, and drove us on deck; threatening to report us, if we ever dared to be familiar with him again.
My top-mates thought that this remarkable metamorphose was the effect produced upon a weak, vain character suddenly elevated from the level of a mere seaman to the dignified position of a _petty officer_.