'It was many years afterwards that I learned these particulars, but I
must now speak of my dismissal and its cause. From the day that your
grandfather's love for his young bride began to decline, he hated me,
yet he feared me--and took good care to conceal it: I was young and
unsuspicious, and when he procured my appointment as first-lieutenant in
a frigate bound to the West Indies, I thanked the man who was plotting
my ruin. The commander of the frigate was one of the meanest wretches
that ever disgraced a command--an impoverished rake who gained the means
of continuing his excesses by flattering the vanity and aiding the
schemes of his richer companions in vice, and duping the more
inexperienced. He had received his directions evidently, and every
studied insult, everything that petty spite and malice could inflict was
tried to provoke me, but the contempt I felt for the reptile restrained
me full as much as the iron bands of discipline. We arrived at Jamaica
and cruised about the Bay of Mexico for some time, when the daughter of
a rich planter, in South Carolina, (then one of his Majesty's colonies,
now one of the brightest stars in the flag of the Great Republic,) took
a passage with her governess in our ship to New Orleans, whither we were
ordered on service. The Captain tried to make himself agreeable to her,
but she treated his advances with coldness so marked as to enrage him.
She saw through, with ease, the flimsy veil he attempted to throw over
his vices. It was my happy fortune to save her from a watery grave. In
landing, she incautiously stepped from the ladder before the boat was
sufficiently near to receive her, and fell, into the sea. I dashed over
the taffrail, the tide was running strong, but I caught her in my arms,
and bore her up, until the boat came to our relief. Her father, who
awaited her arrival, was unbounded in his expressions of gratitude, and
invited me often to his hotel, he also gave me a cordial invitation to
his plantation in Carolina. The Captain made many unseemly jokes upon