warrant. Nor will you fail to remark, when you see an English
cutter officered by one of those volunteers, that the boy does
not so strut and slap his dirk-hilt with a Bobadil air, and
anticipatingly feel of the place where his warlike whiskers
are going to be, and sputter out oaths so at the men, as is too
often the case with the little boys wearing best-bower anchors on
their lapels in the American Navy.

Yet it must he confessed that at times you see midshipmen who are
noble little fellows, and not at all disliked by the crew. Besides
three gallant youths, one black-eyed little lad in particular, in the
Neversink, was such a one. From his diminutiveness, he went by the name
of _Boat Plug_ among the seamen. Without being exactly familiar with
them, he had yet become a general favourite, by reason of his kindness
of manner, and never cursing them. It was amusing to hear some of the
older Tritons invoke blessings upon the youngster, when his kind tones
fell on their weather-beaten ears. "Ah, good luck to you, sir!" touching
their hats to the little man; "you have a soul to be saved, sir!" There
was a wonderful deal of meaning involved in the latter sentence. _You
have a soul to be saved_, is the phrase which a man-of-war's-man
peculiarly applies to a humane and kind-hearted officer. It also implies
that the majority of quarter-deck officers are regarded by them in such
a light that they deny to them the possession of souls. Ah! but these
plebeians sometimes have a sublime vengeance upon patricians. Imagine an
outcast old sailor seriously cherishing the purely speculative conceit
that some bully in epaulets, who orders him to and fro like a slave, is
of an organization immeasurably inferior to himself; must at last perish
with the brutes, while he goes to his immortality in heaven.

But from what has been said in this chapter, it must not be inferred