Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

196 The English Admirals.
There are portions of this business on board the
Thunder over which the reader passes hghtly
and hurriedly, Hke a traveller in a malarious
country. It is easy enough to understand the
opinion of Dr. Johnson : "Why, sir," he said,
" no man will be a sailor who has contrivance
enough to get himself into a jail." You would
fancy any one's spirit would die out under such
an accumulation of darkness, noisomeness, and
injustice, above all when he had not come there
of his own free will, but under the cutlasses and
bludgeons of the press-gang. But perhaps a
watch on deck in the sharp sea air put a man
on his mettle again ; a battle must have been a
capital relief; and prize-money, bloodily earned
and grossly squandered, opened the doors of the
prison for a twinkling. Somehow or other, at
least, this worst of possible lives could not over-
lie the spirit and gaiety of our sailors ; they did
their duty as though they had some interest in
the fortune of that country which so cruelly