The Two Admirals

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"If any thing could make me as much at home in a house as in a ship, it
would be so hearty a welcome; and I intend to accept your hospitality in
the very spirit in which it is offered. Atwood and I have landed to send
off some important despatches to the First Lord, and we will thank you
for putting us in the way of doing it, in the safest and most
expeditious manner. Curiosity and surprise have already occasioned the
loss of half an hour; while a soldier, or a sailor, should never lose
half a minute."

"Is a courier who knows the country well, needed, Sir Gervaise?" the
lieutenant demanded, modestly, though with an interest that showed he
was influenced only by zeal for the service.

The admiral looked at him, intently, for a moment, and seemed pleased
with the hint implied in the question.

"Can you ride?" asked Sir Gervaise, smiling. "I could have brought
half-a-dozen youngsters ashore with me; but, besides the doubts about
getting a horse--a chaise I take it is out of the question here--I was
afraid the lads might disgrace themselves on horseback."

"This must be said in pleasantry, Sir Gervaise," returned Wychecombe;
"he would be a strange Virginian at least, who does not know how to
ride!"

"And a strange Englishman, too, Bluewater would say; and yet I never see
the fellow straddle a horse that I do not wish it were a
studding-sail-boom run out to leeward! We sailors _fancy_ we ride, Mr.
Wychecombe, but it is some such fancy as a marine has for the
fore-topmast-cross-trees. Can a horse be had, to go as far as the
nearest post-office that sends off a daily mail?"

"That can it, Sir Gervaise," put in Sir Wycherly. "Here is Dick mounted
on as good a hunter as is to be found in England; and I'll answer for my
young namesake's willingness to put the animal's mettle to the proof.
Our little mail has just left Wychecombe for the next twenty-four hours,
but by pushing the beast, there will be time to reach the high road in
season for the great London mail, which passes the nearest market-town
at noon. It is but a gallop of ten miles and back, and that I'll answer
for Mr. Wychecombe's ability to do, and to join us at dinner by four."

Young Wychecombe expressing his readiness to perform all this, and even
more at need, the arrangement was soon made. Dick was dismounted, the
lieutenant got his despatches and his instructions, took his leave, and
had galloped out of sight, in the next five minutes. The admiral then
declared himself at liberty for the day, accepting the invitation of Sir
Wycherly to breakfast and dine at the Hall, in the same spirit of
frankness as that in which it had been given. Sir Wycherly was so
spirited as to refuse the aid of his pony, but insisted on walking
through the village and park to his dwelling, though the distance was
more than a mile. Just as they were quitting the signal-station, the old
man took the admiral aside, and in an earnest, but respectful manner,
disburthened his mind to the following effect.

"Sir Gervaise," he said, "I am no sailor, as you know, and least of all
do I bear His Majesty's commission in the navy, though I am in the
county commission as a justice of the peace; so, if I make any little
mistake you will have the goodness to overlook it, for I know that the
etiquette of the quarter-deck is a very serious matter, and is not to be
trifled with;--but here is Dutton, as good a fellow in his way as
lives--his father was a sort of a gentleman too, having been the
attorney of the neighbourhood, and the old man was accustomed to dine
with me forty years ago--"

"I believe I understand you, Sir Wycherly," interrupted the admiral;
"and I thank you for the attention you wish to pay my prejudices; but,
you are master of Wychecombe, and I should feel myself a troublesome
intruder, indeed, did you not ask whom you please to dine at your own
table."

"That's not quite it, Sir Gervaise, though you have not gone far wide of
the mark. Dutton is only a master, you know; and it seems that a master
on board ship is a very different thing from a master on shore; so
Dutton, himself, has often told me."

"Ay, Dutton is right enough as regards a king's ship, though the two
offices are pretty much the same, when other craft are alluded to. But,
my dear Sir Wycherly, an admiral is not disgraced by keeping company
with a boatswain, if the latter is an honest man. It is true we have our
customs, and what we call our quarter-deck and forward officers; which
is court end and city, on board ship; but a master belongs to the first,
and the master of the Plantagenet, Sandy McYarn, dines with me once a
month, as regularly as he enters a new word at the top of his log-book.
I beg, therefore, you will extend your hospitality to whom you
please--or--" the admiral hesitated, as he cast a good-natured glance at
the master, who stood still uncovered, waiting for his superior to move
away; "or, perhaps, Sir Wycherly, you would permit _me_ to ask a friend
to make one of our party."

"That's just it, Sir Gervaise," returned the kind-hearted baronet; "and
Dutton will be one of the happiest fellows in Devonshire. I wish we
could have Mrs. Dutton and Milly, and then the table would look what my
poor brother James--St. James I used to call him--what the Rev. James
Wychecombe was accustomed to term, mathematical. He said a table should
have all its sides and angles duly filled. James was a most agreeable
companion, Sir Gervaise, and, in divinity, he would not have turned his
back on one of the apostles, I do verily believe!"

The admiral bowed, and turning to the master, he invited him to be of
the party at the Hall, in the manner which one long accustomed to render
his civilities agreeable by a sort of professional off-handed way, well
knew how to assume.

"Sir Wycherly has insisted that I shall consider his table as set in my
own cabin," he continued; "and I know of no better manner of proving my
gratitude, than by taking him at his word, and filling it with guests
that will be agreeable to us both. I believe there is a Mrs. Dutton, and
a Miss--a--a--a--"

"Milly," put in the baronet, eagerly; "Miss Mildred Dutton--the daughter
of our good friend Dutton, here, and a young lady who would do credit to
the gayest drawing-room in London."

"You perceive, sir, that our kind host anticipates the wishes of an old
bachelor, as it might be by instinct, and desires the company of the
ladies, also. Miss Mildred will, at least, have two young men to do
homage to her beauty, and _three_ old ones to sigh in the distance--hey!
Atwood?"

"Mildred, as Sir Wycherly knows, sir, has been a little disturbed this
morning," returned Dutton, putting on his best manner for the occasion;
"but, I feel no doubt, will be too grateful for this honour, not to
exert herself to make a suitable return. As for my wife, gentlemen--"

"And what is to prevent Mrs. Dutton from being one of the party,"
interrupted Sir Wycherly, as he observed the husband to hesitate; "she
sometimes favours me with her company."

"I rather think she will to-day, Sir Wycherly, if Mildred is well enough
to go; the good woman seldom lets her daughter stray far from her
apron-strings. She keeps her, as I tell her, within the sweep of her own
hawse, Sir Gervaise."

"So much the wiser she, Master Dutton," returned the admiral, pointedly.
"The best pilot for a young woman is a good mother; and now you have a
fleet in your roadstead, I need not tell a seaman of your experience
that you are on pilot-ground;--hey! Atwood?"

Here the parties separated, Dutton remaining uncovered until his
superior had turned the corner of his little cottage, and was fairly out
of sight. Then the master entered his dwelling to prepare his wife and
daughter for the honours they had in perspective. Before he executed
this duty, however, the unfortunate man opened what he called a
locker--what a housewife would term a cupboard--and fortified his nerves
with a strong draught of pure Nantes; a liquor that no hostilities,
custom-house duties, or national antipathies, has ever been able to
bring into general disrepute in the British Islands. In the mean time
the party of the two baronets pursued its way towards the Hall.

The village, or hamlet of Wychecombe, lay about half-way between the
station and the residence of the lord of the manor. It was an
exceedingly rural and retired collection of mean houses, possessing
neither physician, apothecary, nor attorney, to give it importance. A
small inn, two or three shops of the humblest kind, and some twenty
cottages of labourers and mechanics, composed the place, which, at that
early day, had not even a chapel, or a conventicle; dissent not having
made much progress then in England. The parish church, one of the old
edifices of the time of the Henrys, stood quite alone, in a field, more
than a mile from the place; and the vicarage, a respectable abode, was
just on the edge of the park, fully half a mile more distant. In short,
Wychecombe was one of those places which was so far on the decline, that
few or no traces of any little importance it may have once possessed,
were any longer to be discovered; and it had sunk entirely into a hamlet
that owed its allowed claims to be marked on the maps, and to be noted
in the gazetteers, altogether to its antiquity, and the name it had
given to one of the oldest knightly families in England.

No wonder then, that the arrival of a fleet under the head, produced a
great excitement in the little village. The anchorage was excellent, so
far as the bottom was concerned, but it could scarcely be called a
roadstead in any other point of view, since there was shelter against no
wind but that which blew directly off shore, which happened to be a wind
that did not prevail in that part of the island. Occasionally, a small
cruiser would come-to, in the offing, and a few frigates had lain at
single anchors in the roads, for a tide or so, in waiting for a change
of weather; but this was the first fleet that had been known to moor
under the cliffs within the memory of man. The fog had prevented the
honest villagers from ascertaining the unexpected honour that had been
done them, until the reports of the two guns reached their ears, when
the important intelligence spread with due rapidity over the entire
adjacent country. Although Wychecombe did not lie in actual view of the
sea, by the time the party of Sir Wycherly entered the hamlet, its
little street was already crowded with visiters from the fleet; every
vessel having sent at least one boat ashore, and many of them some three
or four. Captain's and gun-room stewards, midshipmen's foragers,
loblolly boys, and other similar harpies, were out in scores; for this
was a part of the world in which bum-boats were unknown; and if the
mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must fain go to the
mountain. Half an hour had sufficed to exhaust all the unsophisticated
simplicity of the hamlet; and milk, eggs, fresh butter, soft-tommy,
vegetables, and such fruits as were ripe, had already risen quite one
hundred per cent. in the market.

Sir Gervaise had called his force the southern squadron, from the
circumstance of its having been cruising in the Bay of Biscay, for the
last six months. This was a wild winter-station, the danger from the
elements greatly surpassing any that could well be anticipated from the
enemy. The duty notwithstanding had been well and closely performed;
several West India, and one valuable East India convoy having been
effectually protected, as well as a few straggling frigates of the enemy
picked up; but the service had been excessively laborious to all engaged
in it, and replete with privations. Most of those who now landed, had
not trod terra firma for half a year, and it was not wonderful that all
the officers whose duties did not confine them to the vessels, gladly
seized the occasion to feast their senses with the verdure and odours of
their native island. Quite a hundred guests of this character were also
pouring into the street of Wychecombe, or spreading themselves among the
surrounding farm-houses; flirting with the awkward and blushing girls,
and keeping an eye at the same time to the main chance of the
mess-table.

"Our boys have already found out your village, Sir Wycherly, in spite of
the fog," the vice-admiral remarked, good-humouredly, as he cast his
eyes around at the movement of the street; "and the locusts of Egypt
will not come nearer to breeding a famine. One would think there was a
great dinner _in petto_, in every cabin of the fleet, by the number of
the captain's stewards that are ashore, hey! Atwood? I have seen nine of
the harpies, myself, and the other seven can't be far off."

"Here is Galleygo, Sir Gervaise," returned the secretary, smiling;
"though _he_ can scarcely be called a captain's steward, having the
honour to serve a vice-admiral and a commander-in-chief."

"Ay, but _we_ feed the whole fleet at times, and have some excuse for
being a little exacting--harkee, Galleygo--get a horse-cart, and push
off at once, four or five miles further into the country; you might as
well expect to find real pearls in fishes' eyes, as hope to pick up any
thing nice among so many gun-room and cock-pit boys. I dine ashore
to-day, but Captain Greenly is fond of mutton-chops, you'll remember."

This was said kindly, and in the manner of a man accustomed to treat his
domestics with the familiarity of humble friends. Galleygo was as
unpromising a looking butler as any gentleman ashore would be at all
likely to tolerate; but he had been with his present master, and in his
present capacity, ever since the latter had commanded a sloop of war.
All his youth had been passed as a top-man, and he was really a prime
seaman; but accident having temporarily placed him in his present
station, Captain Oakes was so much pleased with his attention to his
duty, and particularly with his order, that he ever afterwards retained
him in his cabin, notwithstanding the strong desire the honest fellow
himself had felt to remain aloft. Time and familiarity, at length
reconciled the steward to his station, though he did not formally accept
it, until a clear agreement had been made that he was not to be
considered an idler on any occasion that called for the services of the
best men. In this manner David, for such was his Christian name, had
become a sort of nondescript on board of a man-of-war; being foremost in
all the cuttings out, a captain of a gun, and was frequently seen on a
yard in moments of difficulty, just to keep his hand in, as he expressed
it, while he descended to the duties of the cabin in peaceable times and
good weather. Near thirty years had he thus been half-steward,
half-seaman when afloat, while on land he was rather a counsellor and
minister of the closet, than a servant; for out of a ship he was utterly
useless, though he never left his master for a week at a time, ashore or
afloat. The name of Galleygo was a _sobriquet_ conferred by his brother
top-men, but had been so generally used, that for the last twenty years
most of his shipmates believed it to be his patronymic. When this
compound of cabin and forecastle received the order just related, he
touched the lock of hair on his forehead, a ceremony he always used
before he spoke to Sir Gervaise, the hat being removed at some three or
four yards' distance, and made his customary answer of--

"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
race-horse."

"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 name; but it sounds
something like a Christian baptism. If my poor brother, St. James, were
living, now, he could tell us all about it."

"Christian baptism! That's an odd allusion for a field of battle. The
armies can't have got to Jerusalem; hey! Atwood?"

"I rather think, Sir Gervaise," the secretary coolly remarked, "that Sir
Wycherly Wychecombe refers to the battle that took place last spring--it
was fought at Font-something; and a font certainly has something to do
with Christian baptism."

"That's it--that's it," cried Sir Wycherly, with some eagerness;
"Fontenoi was the name of the place, where the Duke would have carried
all before him, and brought Marshal Saxe, and all his frog-eaters
prisoners to England, had our Dutch and German allies behaved better
than they did. So it is with poor old England, gentlemen; whatever _she_
gains, her allies always _lose_ for her--the Germans, or the colonists,
are constantly getting us into trouble!"

Both Sir Gervaise and his friend were practical men, and well knew that
they never fought the Dutch or the French, without meeting with
something that was pretty nearly their match. They had no faith in
general national superiority. The courts-martial that so often succeeded
general actions, had taught them that there were all degrees of spirit,
as well as all degrees of a want of spirit; and they knew too much, to
be the dupes of flourishes of the pen, or of vapid declamation at
dinner-speeches, and in the House of Commons. Men, well led and
commanded, they had ascertained by experience, were worth twice as much
as the same men when ill led and ill commanded; and they were not to be
told that the moral tone of an army or a fleet, from which all its
success was derived, depended more on the conventional feeling that had
been got up through moral agencies, than on birth-place, origin, or
colour. Each glanced his eye significantly at the other, and a sarcastic
smile passed over the face of Sir Gervaise, though his friend maintained
his customary appearance of gravity.

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