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And so I'll just go about the business in earnest; get the carpenter up with his plumb-bob, and set every thing as straight up-and-down as the back of a grenadier." Lord Morganic laughed, as was usual with him when his lieutenant saw fit to be humorous; and then his caprice in changing the staying of his masts, as well as the order which countermanded it, was forgotten.
"We shall all be jealous of this compliment to Captain Parker, Sir Gervaise," he called out, "unless your favours are occasionally extended to some of us less worthy ones." "Ay ay Morganic, you'll be remembered in proper time. In the mean while, keep your people's eyes open, so as not to lose sight of the French. We shall have something to say to them in the morning."
'The French ship was taken possession of, and brought off, by the Achilles, Captain the Earl of Morganic! I hope the old fellow will have the decency to give us our due. I rather think it was our last broadside that brought the colours down?" A suitable answer was returned, but as the ship is drawing ahead, we cannot follow her to relate it.
This ship, having more room, had easily luffed to windward of the Plantagenet, simply letting go her bowlines, as her bows doubled on the admiral's stern, in order to check her way. "How do you do to-day, Sir Gervaise?" called out Lord Morganic, without waiting for the commander-in-chief's hail "allow me to congratulate you, sir, on the exploits of this glorious day!"
All within hearing smiled, even to the rough old tars, who were astraddle of the yards; and even Sir Gervaise's lip curled a little, though he was not exactly in a joking humour. "Come, come, Morganic, do you let my habits alone, and look out for your own fore-top-mast. Why, in the name of seamanship, is that spar stayed forward in such a fashion, looking like a xebec's foremast?"
"Far from it, Greenly; else would not Morganic have been made a captain at twenty, and old Parker, for instance, one only at fifty. But, somehow, our classes slide into each other, in a way that neutralizes, in a great degree, the effect of birth. Is it not so, Atwood?" "Some of our classes, Sir Gervaise, manage to slide into all the best places, if the truth must be said."
"Daly," said the Earl of Morganic to his first lieutenant, an experienced old Irishman of fifty, who still sung a good song and told a good story, and what was a little extraordinary for either of these accomplishments, knew how to take good care of a ship; "Daly, I suppose we must humour the old gentleman, or he'll be quarantining me, and that I shouldn't particularly like on the eve of a general action; so we'll ease off forward, and set up the strings aft, again.
Yes; a good fellow is Parker; and, Locker," to his own man, who was also in the boat; "mind you send him two of the best pieces of that brawn hey! hey! hey! what the d l has Lord Morganic" a descendant from royalty by the left hand, "been doing now! That ship is kept like a tailor's jay figure, just to stuff jackets and gim-cracks on her Achilles, there!"
The Earl of Morganic, a young man of four-and-twenty, who had succeeded to the title a few years before by the death of an elder brother, the usual process by which an old peer is brought into the British navy, the work being too discouraging for those who have fortune before their eyes from the start, now advanced to the quarter of the ship, bowed with respectful ease, and spoke with a self-possession that not one of the old commanders of the fleet would have dared to use.
The Cæsar and le Pluton were still foul of each other, though a rear-admiral's flag was flying at the mizzen of the first, while that which had so lately fluttered at the royal-mast-head of the other, had disappeared. The Achilles, Lord Morganic, was still among the French, more to leeward than any other English ship, without a single spar standing.
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