Frank Mildmay | Page 5

to the entreaties of Tom and the boys
who stood by, cracking their sides with laughter at the poor usher's
helpless misery.
Having had my frolic, I came out, and voluntarily surrendered myself
to my enemies, from whom I received the same mercy in proportion,
that a Russian does from a Turk. Dripping wet, cold,--and covered with
mud, I was first shown to the boys as an aggregate of all that was bad
in nature; a lecture was read to them on the enormity of my offence,
and solemn denunciations of my future destiny closed the discourse.
The shivering fit produced by the cold bath was relieved by as sound a
flogging as could be inflicted, while two ushers held me; but no effort
of theirs could elicit one groan or sob from me; my teeth were clenched
in firm determination of revenge: with this passion my bosom glowed,
and my brain was on fire. The punishment, though dreadfully severe,
had one good effect--it restored my almost suspended animation; and I
strongly recommend the same remedy being applied to all young ladies
and gentlemen who, from disappointed love or other such trifling
causes, throw themselves into the water. Had the miserable usher been

treated after this prescription, he might have escaped a cold and
rheumatic fever which had nearly consigned him to a country
church-yard, in all probability to reappear at the dissecting-room of St.
Bartholomew's Hospital.
About this time Johnny Pagoda, who had been two years at sea,--came
to the school to visit his brother and schoolfellows. I pumped this
fellow to tell me all he knew: he never tried to deceive me, or to make a
convert. He had seen enough of a midshipman's life, to know that a
cockpit was not paradise; but he gave me clear and ready answers to all
my questions. I discovered that there was no schoolmaster in the ship,
and that the midshipmen were allowed a pint of wine a day. A
man-of-war, and the gallows, they say, refuse nothing; and as I had
some strong presentiments from recent occurrences, that if I did not
volunteer for the one, I should, in all probability, be pressed for the
other, I chose the lesser evil of the two; and having made up my mind
to enter the glorious profession, I shortly after communicated my
intention to my parents.
From the moment I had come to this determination, I cared not what
crime I committed, in hopes of being expelled from the school. I wrote
scurrilous letters, headed a mutiny, entered into a league with the other
boys to sink, burn, and destroy, and do all the mischief we could. Tom
Crauford had the master's child to dry nurse: he was only two years old:
Tom let him fall, not intentionally, but the poor child was a cripple in
consequence of it for life. This was an accident which under any other
circumstances we should have deplored, but to us it was almost a joke.
The cruel treatment I had received from these people, had so
demoralised me, that those passions which under more skilful or kinder
treatment had either not been known, or would have lain dormant, were
roused into full and malignant activity: I went to school a good-hearted
boy, I left it a savage. The accident with the child occurred two days
before the commencement of the vacation, and we were all dismissed
on the following day in consequence. On my return home I stated
verbally to my father and mother, as I had done before by letter, that I
was resolved to go to sea. My mother wept, my father expostulated. I

gazed with apathy on the one, and listened with cold indifference to the
reasoning and arguments of the other; a choice of schools was offered
to me, where I might be a parlour boarder, and I was to finish at the
university, if I would give up my fatal infatuation. Nothing, however,
would do; the die was cast, and for the sea I was to prepare.
What fool was it who said that the happiest times of our lives is passed
at school? There may, indeed, be exceptions, but the remark cannot be
generalised. Stormy as has been my life, the most miserable part of it
(with very little exception) was passed at school; and my mind never
received so much injury from any scenes of vice and excess in after-life,
as it did from the shameful treatment and bad example I met with there.
If my bosom burned with fiend-like passions, whose fault was it? How
had the sacred pledge, given by the master, been redeemed? Was I not
sacrificed to the most sordid avarice, in the first instance, and almost
flayed alive in the second, to gratify revenge?