Of Black Bet I was rammer-and-sponger; and ram and sponge I did, like a good fellow.

I have no doubt that, had I and my gun been at the battle of the Nile, we would mutually have immortalised ourselves; the ramming-pole would have been hung up in Westminster Abbey; and I, ennobled by the king, besides receiving the illustrious honour of an autograph letter from his majesty through the perfumed right hand of his private secretary.
But it was terrible work to help run in and out of the porthole that amazing mass of metal, especially as the thing must be clone in a trice.

Then, at the summons of a horrid, rasping rattle, swayed by the Captain in person, we were made to rush from our guns, seize pikes and pistols, and repel an imaginary army of boarders, who, by a fiction of the officers, were supposed to be assailing all sides of the ship at once.

After cutting and slashing at them a while, we jumped back to our guns, and again went to jerking our elbows.
Meantime, a loud cry is heard of "Fire! fire! fire!" in the fore-top; and a regular engine, worked by a set of Bowery-boy tars, is forthwith set to playing streams of water aloft.

And now it is "Fire! fire! fire!" on the main-deck; and the entire ship is in as great a commotion as if a whole city ward were in a blaze.
Are our officers of the Navy utterly unacquainted with the laws of good health?
Do they not know that this violent exercise, taking place just after a hearty dinner, as it generally does, is eminently calculated to breed the dyspepsia?
There was no satisfaction in dining; the flavour of every mouthful was destroyed by the thought that the next moment the cannonading drum might be beating to quarters.
Such a sea-martinet was our Captain, that sometimes we were roused from our hammocks at night; when a scene would ensue that it is not in the power of pen and ink to describe.