If we should chance to engage a ship, then, who could tell but some bungling small-arm marks-man in the enemy's tops might put a bullet through _me_ instead of the Commodore?
If they hit _him_, no doubt he would not feel it much, for he was used to that sort of thing, and, indeed, had a bullet in him already.
Whereas, _I_ was altogether unaccustomed to having blue pills playing round my head in such an indiscriminate way.

Besides, ours was a flag-ship; and every one knows what a peculiarly dangerous predicament the quarter-deck of Nelson's flag-ship was in at the battle of Trafalgar; how the lofty tops of the enemy were full of soldiers, peppering away at the English Admiral and his officers.

Many a poor sailor, at the guns of that quarter-deck, must have received a bullet intended for some wearer of an epaulet.
By candidly confessing my feelings on this subject, I do by no means invalidate my claims to being held a man of prodigious valour.

I merely state my invincible repugnance to being shot for somebody else.

If I am shot, be it with the express understanding in the shooter that I am the identical person intended so to be served.