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If there are soldiers to be encountered, we should have soldiers to oppose them; but as it must be sudden boat-work, and regular evolutions must give place to a seaman's bustle, a sea-officer should command. Is my request granted, Captain Munson?" The veteran replied, without hesitation: "It is, sir; it was my intention to offer you the service, and I rejoice to see you accept it so cheerfully."
We could not have been gladder if it had been one of our ships, for in a time like that I can truly say with old Admiral Josiah Latnall, 'that blood is thicker than water." One more trait will serve to build up the image of this typical sea-officer.
This condition of things gave Nelson hopes that, upon the approaching departure of Lord Hood for England, the "Agamemnon" might go with him; for he was loath to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he had won, and upon whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great Britain. Hood was inclined to take her, and to transfer the ship's company bodily to a seventy-four.
Almost the same may be said of Hood, of whom Nelson wrote, 'He is the greatest sea-officer I ever knew. There must have been something, therefore, beyond the meritorious qualities of our principal officers which helped us so consistently to victory. The many triumphs won could not have been due in every case to the individual superiority of the British admiral or captain to his opponent.
While I was still in this delightful dream, we came suddenly in front of a large inn, and met Squire Trelawney, all dressed out like a sea-officer, in stout blue cloth, coming out of the door with a smile on his face and a capital imitation of a sailor's walk. "Here you are," he cried, "and the doctor came last night from London. Bravo! the ship's company complete!"
Of course, as Nelson invariably experienced, an officer addressed in the latter style found always a lion in his path. So his orders to Gore were not, "Obey, if" but "Disobey, unless;" and Gore knew, as every man in the Mediterranean knew by long trial, that, if he disobeyed, he would have at his back, through thick and thin, the first sea-officer in Great Britain.
Sinan was just one of those blindly valiant fighters from whom the politic Ibrahim had desired to deliver his master when he had urged the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din: brave as a lion, keen as the edge of his own good scimitar, fanatical, as became a Hodja who had visited the Holy Places, Sinan was a type of the Turkish sea-officer: devoid of strategical instinct and tactical training, his one idea was a headlong attack, then victory or the houris of Paradise.
It was, besides, part of his ingrained military philosophy, never absent from his careful mind, that a fair wind may fall or shift. "The object of a sea-officer is to embrace the happy moment which now and then offers, it may be to-day, it may be never."
Very often, this had habit got him into very serious scrapes. Twice was he put off duty by the Commodore; and once he came near being broken for his frolics. So far as his efficiency as a sea-officer was concerned, on shore at least, Jack might bouse away as much as he pleased; but afloat it will not do at all.
"Enough, enough," said Borroughcliffe; "you have exhibited sufficient knowledge to convince me that you do know something of your trade, and nothing of these articles. Mr. Griffith, do you claim this boy?" "I believe I must, sir," said the young sea-officer, who had been intently listening to the examination. "On whatever errand you have now ventured here, Mr.
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