Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 1.djvu/243

 had I been cut off in my sins, what would have been my destiny? I started with horror at the danger I had escaped, and looked forward with gloomy apprehension at those that still awaited me. I sought in vain, among all my actions since I left my mother's care, one single deed of virtue, one that sprang from a good motive. 'There was, it 1s true, an outward gloss and polish for the world to look at; but all was dark within: and I felt that a keener eye than that of mortality was searching my soul, where deception was worse than useless.

At twelve o'clock, before I had once closed my eyes, I was called to relieve the deck, having what is called the middle watch, i. e. from midnight till four in the morning. We had, the day before, buried a quarter-master, nick-named Quid, an old seaman who had destroyed himself by drinking—no very uncommon case in his majesty's service. The corpse of a man who has destroyed his inside by intemperance is