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Updated: June 12, 2025
The mids, with the exception of three, were fine-looking lads from the ages of fifteen to eighteen, fond of fun and mischief and of their half-pint of rum; were frequently at watch and watch, mast-headed, pooped, and confined to their half-farthing candle-lighted mess-holes.
To have forsaken his saddle at that moment, would have been to risk the breaking of his neck. From where they stood looking after him the mids could not make out the character of the ground. Under the light of the moon the surface seemed all of a piece all a bed of smooth, soft sand. For this reason were they perplexed by his behaviour. There was that in the incident to make them apprehensive.
One afternoon, taking a glass of sangaree at the tavern, I was accosted by one of our late mids who had come on shore with some others to what he called wet his commission. “Will you do me the favour to join us for a quarter of an hour. We have a room upstairs,” said he to me. I told him I would in about five minutes.
To Thomas's words Annie's only reply was a fixed gaze, which he answered thus, resuming his last words: "Ay, lassie, little ye ken aboot watchin' and prayin'. Whan it pleased the Lord to call me, I was stan'in' my lane i' the mids' o' a peat-moss, luikin' wast, whaur the sun had left a reid licht ahin him, as gin he had jist brunt oot o' the lift, an' hadna gane doon ava.
The officers among the squadron made a subscription for them, and the mids, although not rich, were not backward. The wind becoming favourable, we on the fifth morning made sail out of the roads and stood down Channel. The same night, which was very dark and squally, we fell in with the Venus frigate, who, before we could answer the private signal, favoured us with a discharge of musketry.
Her larboard bumpkin dismounted the eighteen-pounder in the foremost lieutenant’s cabin in the wardroom, and in falling clear she swept away both quarter galleries from the side, one of which was fitted up as a library for the first lieutenant, who lost all his books. Some of the mids who loved him were wicked enough to say that it was a punishment inflicted on him for mastheading them so often.
The cunning old sheik, who had the first claim to the three mids, had been anxious to retain them; but they were also wanted by Golah, and the Arab was compelled to give them up, after having been fairly beaten at the game; parting with his sable competitor in a mood that was anything but agreeable. The black sheik had three wives, all of whom possessed the gift of eloquence in a high degree.
We completed our water, and took on board a Capuchin friar and two mulatto officers, for what purpose we never could find except to give them a cruise. The friar, who was a quiet, fat, rather good-looking man, messed in the cabin. The wicked mids said to “confess” the captain. One afternoon we anchored in a bay to the westward of Cape François.
Of coorse, Lord, gien ye tellt me, that wad mak a' the differ, for ye're Robert's maister as weel's mine, an' your wull wad saitisfee him jist as weel's me. I wad fain lat him gang, puir chiel! but I daurna. Lord, convert him to the trowth. Lord, lat him ken what hate is. But eh, Lord! I wuss ye wad tell me what to du. Thy wull's the beginnin' an' mids an' en' o' a' thing to me.
On board this large ship we were for some days puzzled to find out each other, and for the first time in our lives we messed and slept by candle-light. In a few days we received on board four additional lieutenants, six mids, a captain of marines, a chaplain, schoolmaster, and two hundred more men, besides forty marines.
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