Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/18

 may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb;" but the ushers began to muster round, the boys hung aloof, and Pagoda, uncertain which side the neutrals would take, laid down his arms, and surrendered at discretion.

Had the East Indian followed up his act by the application of a little discipline at the fountain head, it is more than probable that a popular commotion, not unlike that of Mas' Aniello, would have ensued; but the time was not come: the Indian shewed a white feather, was laughed at, flogged, and sent home. to his friends, who had intended him for the bar; but foreseeing that he might, in the course of events, chance to cut a figure on the wrong side of it, sent him to sea, where his valour, if he had any, would find more profitable employment.

This unsuccessful attempt of the young Oriental, was the primary cause of all my fame and celebrity in after life. I had always hated school; and this, of all others, seemed to me the most hateful. The emancipation of Johnny