Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/133

 really began to think I had been at the mast-head all the time, and had been dreaming I was in the top. At last, turning to me, he said, "Now, Sir, I ask you, on your honour, as an officer and a gentleman, where were you when I first hailed?"

"At the mast-head, Sir," said I.

"Be it so," he replied: "as you are an officer and a gentleman, I am bound to believe you." Then turning on his heel, he walked away in a greater rage than I ever remember to have seen him.

I plainly perceived that I was not believed, and that I had lost his good opinion. Yet, to consider the case fairy and impartially, how could I have otherwise? I had been much too long confined to the mast-head—as long as a man might take to go from London to Bath in a stage coach; I had lost all my meals; and these poor fellows, to save me from further punishment, had voluntarily exposed themselves to a flogging at the gangway by telling a barefaced