One told me they were called the frigate's _teeth_, because they stopped the Frenchman's _jaw._ Another midshipman said that he had been so often in action, that he was called the _Fire-eater_.

I asked him how it was that he escaped being killed.

He replied that he always made it a rule, upon the first cannon-ball coming through the ship's side, to put his head into the hole which it had made; as, by a calculation made by Professor Innman, the odds were 32,647, and some decimals to boot, that another ball would not come in at the same hole.

That's what I never should have thought of.
FOOTNOTES: [1] This celebrated personage is the prototype of Mr Nobody on board of a man-of-war.
[B] Widows' men are imaginary sailors, borne on the books, and receiving pay and prize-money, which is appropriated to Greenwich Hospital..