“Ay-ay-sir – your honour has been a young gentleman yourself, and knows what a young gentleman’s stomach gets to be, a’ter a six months’ fast in the Bay of Biscay; and a young gentleman’s boy’s stomach, too. I always thinks there’s but a small chance for us, sir, when I sees six or eight of them light cruisers in my neighbourhood. They’re som’mat like the sloops and cutters of a fleet, which picks up all the prizes.”
“Quite true, Master Galleygo; but if the light cruisers get the prizes, you should recollect that the admiral always has his share of the prize-money.”
“Yes, sir, I knows we has our share, but that’s accordin’ to law, and because the commanders of the light craft can’t help it. Let ‘em once get the law on their side, and not a ha’pence would bless our pockets! No, sir, what we gets, we gets by the law; and as there is no law to fetch up young gentlemen or their boys, that pays as they goes, we never gets any thing they or their boys puts hands on.”
“I dare say you are right, David, as you always are. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have an Act of Parliament to give an admiral his twentieth in the reefers’ foragings. The old fellows would sometimes get back some of their own poultry and fruit in that way, hey! Atwood?”
The secretary smiled his assent, and then Sir Gervaise apologized to his host, repeated the order to the steward, and the party proceeded.
“This fellow of mine, Sir Wycherly, is no respecter of persons, beyond the etiquette of a man-of-war,” the admiral continued, by way of further excuse. “I believe His Majesty himself would be favoured with an essay on some part of the economy of the cabin, were Galleygo to get an opportunity of speaking his mind to him. Nor is the fool without his expectations of some day enjoying this privilege; for the last lime I went to court, I found honest David rigged, from stem to stern, in a full suit of claret and steel, under the idea that he was ‘to sail in company with me,’ as he called it, ‘with or without signal!’”
“There was nothing surprising in that, Sir Gervaise,” observed the secretary. “Galleygo has sailed in company with you so long, and to so many strange lands; has been through so many dangers at your side, and has got so completely to consider himself as part of the family, that it was the most natural thing in the world he should expect to go to court with you.”
“True enough. The fellow would face the devil, at my side, and I don’t see why he should hesitate to face the king. I sometimes call him Lady Oakes, Sir Wycherly, for he appears to think he has a right of dower, or to some other lawyer-like claim on my estate; and as for the fleet, he always speaks of that, as if we commanded it in common. I wonder how Bluewater tolerates the blackguard; for he never scruples to allude to him as under our orders! If any thing should befal me, Dick and David would have a civil war for the succession, hey! Atwood?”
“I think military subordination would bring Galleygo to his senses, Sir Gervaise, should such an unfortunate accident occur – which Heaven avert for many years to come! There is Admiral Bluewater coming up the street, at this very moment, sir.”
At this sudden announcement, the whole party turned to look in the direction intimated by the secretary. It was by this time at one end of the short street, and all saw a man just entering the other, who, in his walk, air, attire, and manner, formed a striking contrast to the active, merry, bustling, youthful young sailors who thronged the hamlet. In person, Admiral Bluewater was exceedingly tall and exceedingly thin. Like most seamen who have that physical formation, he stooped; a circumstance that gave his years a greater apparent command over his frame, than they possessed in reality. While this bend in his figure deprived it, in a great measure, of the sturdy martial air that his superior presented to the observer, it lent to his carriage a quiet and dignity that it might otherwise have wanted. Certainly, were this officer attired like an ordinary civilian, no one would have taken him for one of England’s bravest and most efficient sea-captains; he would have passed rather as some thoughtful, well-educated, and refined gentleman, of retired habits, diffident of himself, and a stranger to ambition. He wore an undress rear-admiral’s uniform, as a matter of course; but he wore it carelessly, as if from a sense of duty only; or conscious that no arrangement could give him a military air. Still all about his person was faultlessly neat, and perfectly respectable. In a word, no one but a man accustomed to the sea, were it not for his uniform, would suspect the rear-admiral of being a sailor; and even the seaman himself might be often puzzled to detect any other signs of the profession about him, than were to be found in a face, which, fair, gentlemanly, handsome, and even courtly as it was, in expression and outline, wore the tint that exposure invariably stamps on the mariner’s countenance. Here, however, his unseaman-like character ceased. Admiral Oakes had often declared that “Dick Bluewater knew more about a ship than any man in England;” and as for a fleet, his mode of man[oe]uvring one had got to be standard in the service.
As soon as Sir Gervaise recognised his friend, he expressed a wish to wait for him, which was courteously converted by Sir Wycherly into a proposition to return and meet him. So abstracted was Admiral Bluewater, however, that he did not see the party that was approaching him, until he was fairly accosted by Sir Gervaise, who led the advance by a few yards.
“Good-day to you, Bluewater,” commenced the latter, in his familiar, off-hand way; “I’m glad you have torn yourself away from your ship; though I must say the manner in which you came-to, in that fog, was more like instinct, than any thing human! I determined to tell you as much, the moment we met; for I don’t think there is a ship, half her length out of mathematical order, notwithstanding the tide runs, here, like a racehorse.”
“That is owing to your captains, Sir Gervaise,” returned the other, observing the respect of manner, that the inferior never loses with his superior, on service, and in a navy; let their relative rank and intimacy be what they may on all other occasions; “good captains make handy ships. Our gentlemen have now been together so long, that they understand each other’s movements; and every vessel in the fleet has her character as well as her commander!”
“Very true, Admiral Bluewater, and yet there is not another officer in His Majesty’s service, that could have brought a fleet to anchor, in so much order, and in such a fog; and I ask your leave, sir, most particularly to thank you for the lesson you have given, not only to the captains, but to the commander-in-chief. I presume I may admire that which I cannot exactly imitate.”
The rear-admiral merely smiled and touched his hat in acknowledgment of the compliment, but he made no direct answer in words. By this time Sir Wycherly and the others had approached, and the customary introductions took place. Sir Wycherly now pressed his new acquaintance to join his guests, with so much heartiness, that there was no such thing as refusing.
“Since you and Sir Gervaise both insist on it so earnestly, Sir Wycherly,” returned the rear-admiral, “I must consent; but as it is contrary to our practice, when on foreign service – and I call this roadstead a foreign station, as to any thing we know about it – as it is contrary to our practice for both flag-officers to sleep out of the fleet, I shall claim the privilege to be allowed to go off to my ship before midnight. I think the weather looks settled, Sir Gervaise, and we may trust that many hours, without apprehension.”
“Pooh – pooh – Bluewater, you are always fancying the ships in a gale, and clawing off a lee-shore. Put your heart at rest, and let us go and take a comfortable dinner with Sir Wycherly, who has a London paper, I dare to say, that may let us into some of the secrets of state. Are there any tidings from our people in Flanders?”
“Things remain pretty much as they have been,” returned Sir Wycherly, “since that last terrible affair, in which the Duke got the better of the French at – I never can remember an outlandish