So much for angry feelings getting the better of judgment!" The following anecdote will help to relieve the disagreeable impression caused by the incident just related, without obliterating the salutary reflections which it seems calculated to trace on the mind of every well-disposed officer.
Three sailors, belonging to the watering-party of a man-of-war on a foreign station, were discovered by their officer to have strayed from the well at which the casks had been filled.

These men, it appears, instead of assisting in rolling the heavy butts and puncheons across the sand, preferred indulging themselves in a glass of a most insidious tipple, called Mistela in Spanish, but very naturally "transmogrified" by the Jacks into Miss Taylor.

The offenders being dragged out of the pulperia, were consigned, without inquiry, to the launch, though they had been absent only a few minutes, and were still fit enough for work.

The officer of the boat, however, happening to be an iron-hearted disciplinarian, who overlooked nothing, and forgave no one, would not permit the men to rejoin the working party, or to touch a single cask; but when the boat returned to the ship, had the three offenders put in irons.
When these circumstances were reported to the captain in the course of the day, so much acrimony was imparted to his account by the officer, that the captain merely said, "I shall be glad if you will defer stating this matter more fully till to-morrow morning, after breakfast; take the night to think of it." Tomorrow came, and the particulars being again detailed, even more strongly and pointedly, by the officer, the captain likewise became irritated, and under the influence of feelings highly excited had almost ordered the men up for immediate punishment.

Acting, however, upon a rule which he had for sometime laid down, never to chastise any one against whom he felt particularly displeased without at least twenty-four hours' delay, he desired the matter to stand over till the following morning.
In the meantime, the men in confinement, knowing that their offence was a very slight one, laid their heads together, and contrived, by the aid of the purser's steward, to pen a supplicatory epistle to the captain.