Proportionately deep is the despair of the poor wretch who, after struggling and tugging with all his might at the weary windlass of his hopes, can never bring it quite far enough round to hear the joyous sound of the pall dropping into its berth! I well remember most of these important moments of my own life; and I could readily describe the different sensations to which their successive occurrence gave rise, from the startling hour when my father first told me that my own request was now to be granted, for on the very next day I was to go to sea--up to that instant when the still more important announcement met my ear, "Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!" "It is easy to be cheerful when one is successful," says a high authority; and there are "few people who are not good-natured when they have nothing to cross them," says another equally profound recorder of common-places; but the secret of good fortune seems to lie far less in making the most of favourable incidents, or in submitting manfully to disastrous ones, than in studying how to fill up to advantage the long intervals between these great epochs in our lives.
So that there is, perhaps, no point of duty which affords more scope for the talents of a superior than the useful and cheerful employment of the heads and hands of his officers and people during those trying periods of inaction which occur in every service.

Sir Samuel Hood possessed this faculty in a wonderful degree, as he not only kept us all busy when there was nothing to be done, but contrived to make us happy and contented, though some of our prospects were poor enough in all conscience.

My own, for example, since I was placed at the tip of the tail of his long string of private followers; and when the Admiralty List came out, on which I had built so many beautiful castles in the air, my poor name was not upon it at all.

I had not expected to be first or second, or even third; fourth I had reckoned upon as possible; fifth as probable; sixth as certain; so that my horror and disappointment were excessive when this kindest of commanders-in-chief broke to me the fatal news, in the following characteristic manner.
A telegraphic signal had been made from the flagstaff at the Admiral's house to the ship, in these words:-- "Send Mr.Hall on shore, with a crow-bar, two pick-axes, and two spades." All the way to the landing-place I puzzled myself with thinking what on earth could be the object of these tools; little dreaming, good easy lieutenant! that I was so soon to dig the grave of my own hopes.
The Admiral received me at the door with his coat off; and holding out his remaining hand (his right arm was shot away in action), he squeezed mine with even more than his wonted kindness.
"I have been waiting for you with some impatience;" he said, "to be present at the hunt after a white ant's nest, a sort of thing I know you like.

These rogues, the _Termites bellicosi_, as I find the naturalists call them, have made their way into the house! and having carried their galleries up the walls and along the roof, have come down in great force upon a trunk of clothes, which they would have destroyed entirely before night, had I not caught sight of them.