considerable portion of his life in idleness--if that time can be
said to have been idly spent which he devoted to torturing the
Admiralty with applications, remonstrances, and appeals. Then he
was rated as third lieutenant on the books of some worm-eaten old
man-of-war at Portsmouth, and gave up his time to looking after
the stowage of anchors, and counting fathoms of rope. At last he
was again sent afloat as senior lieutenant in a ten-gun brig, and
cruised for some time off the coast of Africa, hunting for
slavers; and returning after a while from this enterprising
employment, he received a sort of amphibious appointment at
Devonport. What his duties were here, the author, being in all
points a landsman, is unable to describe. Those who were inclined
to ridicule Captain Cuttwater declared that the most important of
them consisted in seeing that the midshipmen in and about the
dockyard washed their faces, and put on clean linen not less
often than three times a week. According to his own account, he
had many things of a higher nature to attend to; and, indeed,
hardly a ship sank or swam in Hamoaze except by his special
permission, for a space of twenty years, if his own view of his
own career may be accepted as correct.

He had once declared to certain naval acquaintances, over his
third glass of grog, that he regarded it as his birthright to be
an Admiral; but at the age of seventy-two he had not yet acquired
his birthright, and the probability of his ever attaining it was
becoming very small indeed. He was still bothering Lords and
Secretaries of the Admiralty for further promotion, when he was
astounded by being informed by the Port-Admiral that he was to
be made happy by half-pay and a pension. The Admiral, in
communicating the intelligence, had pretended to think that he