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THE TWO ADMIRALS
“Ay, but that was a long time ago, and they have got bravely
over it. I account for the deficiencies of both the French and
Spanish marines something in this way, Greenly. Columbus,
and the discovery of America, brought ships and sailors into
fashion. But a ship without an officer fit to command her, is
like a body without a soul. Fashion, however, brought your
young nobles into their services, and men were given vessels
because their fathers were dukes and counts, and not because
they knew any thing about them.”
“Is our own service entirely free from this sort of favouritism?” quietly demanded the captain.
“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.”
“Well, that is pretty bold for a Scotchman!” rejoined the
vice-admiral, good-humouredly. “Ever since the accession of
the house of Stuart, we’ve built a bridge across the Tweed that
lets people pass in only one direction. I make no doubt this
Pretender’s son will bring down half Scotland at his heels, to
fill all the berths they may fancy suitable to their merits. It’s an
easy way of paying bounty – promises.”
“This affair in the north, they tell me, seems a little serious,” said Greenly. “I believe this is Mr. Atwood’s opinion?”
“You’ll find it serious enough, if Sir Gervaise’s notion about
the bounty be true,” answered the immovable secretary. “Sco-
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
tia is a small country, but it’s well filled with ‘braw sperits,’ if
there’s an opening for them to prove it.”
“Well, well, this war between England and Scotland is
out of place, while we have the French and Spaniards on our
hands. Most extraordinary scenes have we had ashore, yonder,
Greenly, with an old Devonshire baronet, who slipped and is
off for the other world, while we were in his house.”
“Magrath has told me something of it, sir; and, he tells me
the fill-us-null-us – hang me if I can make out his gibberish,
five minutes after it was told to me.”
“Filius nullius, you mean; nobody’s baby – the son of nobody – have you forgotten your Latin, man?”
“Faith, Sir Gervaise, I never had any to forget. My father
was a captain of a man-of-war before me, and he kept me afloat
from the time I was five, down to the day of his death; Latin
was no part of my spoon-meat.”
“Ay – ay – my good fellow, I knew your father, and was
in the third ship from him, in the action in which he fell,”
returned the vice-admiral, kindly. “Bluewater was just ahead
of him, and we all loved him, as we did an elder brother. You
were not promoted, then.”
“No, sir, I was only a midshipman, and didn’t happen to be
in his own ship that day,” answered Greenly, sensibly touched
with this tribute to his parent’s merit; “but I was old enough
to remember how nobly you all behaved on the occasion.
Well,” – slily brushing his eye with his hand, – “Latin may do
a schoolmaster good, but it is of little use on board ship. I never
had but one scholar among all my cronies and intimates.”
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THE TWO ADMIRALS
“And who was he, Greenly? You shouldn’t despise knowledge, because you don’t understand it. I dare say your intimate was none the worse for a little Latin – enough to go
through nullus, nulla, nullum, for instance. Who was this inti-
mate, Greenly?”
“John Bluewater – handsome Jack, as he was called; the
younger brother of the admiral. They sent him to sea, to keep
him out of harm’s way in some love affair; and you may remember that while he was with the admiral, or Captain Bluewater, as he was then, I was one of the lieutenants. Although
poor Jack was a soldier and in the guards, and he was four or
five years my senior, he took a fancy to me, and we became
intimate. He understood Latin, better than he did his own interests.”
“In what did he fail? – Bluewater was never very communicative to me about that brother.”
“There was a private marriage, and cross guardians, and the
usual difficulties. In the midst of it all, poor John fell in battle,
as you know, and his widow followed him to the grave, within
a month or two. ‘Twas a sad story all round, and I try to think
of it as little as possible.”
“A private marriage!” repeated Sir Gervaise, slowly. “Are
you quite sure of that? I don’t think Bluewater is aware of that
circumstance; at least, I never heard him allude to it. Could
there have been any issue?”
“No one can know it better than myself, as I helped to
get the lady off, and was present at the ceremony. That much
I know. Of issue, I should think there was none; though the
colonel lived a year after the marriage. How far the admiral
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
is familiar with all these circumstances I cannot say, as one
would not like to introduce the particulars of a private marriage of a deceased brother, to his commanding officer.”
“I am glad there was no issue, Greenly – particular circumstances make me glad of that. But we will change the discourse,
as these family disasters make one melancholy; and a melancholy dinner is like ingratitude to Him who bestows it.”
The conversation now grew general, and in due season, in
common with the feast, it ended. After sitting the usual time,
the guests retired. Sir Gervaise then went on deck, and paced
the poop for an hour, looking anxiously ahead, in quest of the
French signal; and, failing of discovering them, he was fain to
seek his berth out of sheer fatigue. Before he did this, however,
the necessary orders were given; and that to call him, should
any thing out of the common track occur, was repeated no less
than four times.
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CHAPTER XXI
“Roll on, thou deep and dark-blue ocean – roll
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin – his control
Stops with the shore; – upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed.”
Childe Harold.
It was broad day-light, when Sir Gervaise Oakes next appeared on deck. As the scene then offered to his view, as well
as the impression it made on his mind, will sufficiently explain
to the reader the state of affairs, some six hours later than the
time last included in our account, we refer him to those for his
own impressions. The wind now blew a real gale, though the
season of the year rendered it less unpleasant to the feelings
than is usual with wintry tempests. The air was even bland,
and still charged with the moisture of the ocean; though it
came sweeping athwart sheets of foam, with a fury, at moments,
which threatened to carry the entire summits of waves miles
from their beds, in spray. Even the aquatic birds seemed to be
terrified, in the instants of the greatest power of the winds,
actually wheeling suddenly on their wings, and plunging into
the element beneath to seek protection from the maddened
efforts of that to which they more properly belonged.
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
Still, Sir Gervaise saw that his ships bore up nobly against
the fierce strife. Each vessel showed the same canvass; viz. – a
reefed fore-sail; a small triangular piece of strong, heavy cloth,
fitted between the end of the bowsprit and the head of the
fore-top-mast; a similar sail over the quarter-deck, between
the mizzen and main masts, and a close-reefed main-top-sail
Several times that morning, Captain Greenly had thought he
should be compelled to substitute a lower surface to the wind
than that of the sail last mentioned. As it was an important
auxiliary, however, in steadying the ship, and in keeping her
under the command of her helm, on each occasion the order
had been delayed, until he now began to question whether
the canvass could be reduced, without too great a risk to the
men whom it would be necessary to send aloft. He had decided
to let it stand or blow away, as fortune might decide. Similar
reasoning left nearly all the other vessels under precisely the
same canvass.
The ships of the vice-admiral’s division had closed in the
night, agreeably to an order given before quitting the anchorage, which directed them to come within the usual sailing
distance, in the event of the weather’s menacing a separation.
This command had been obeyed by the ships astern carrying
sail hard, long after the leading vessels had been eased by reducing their canvass. The order of sailing was the Plantagenet
in the van, and the Carnatic, Achilles, Thunderer, Blenheim,
and Warspite following, in the order named; some changes
having been made in the night, in order to bring the ships of
the division into their fighting-stations, in a line ahead, the
vice-admiral leading. The superiority of the Plantagenet was a
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THE TWO ADMIRALS
little apparent, notwithstanding; the Carnatic alone, and that
only by means of the most careful watching, being able to keep
literally in the commander-in-chief’s wake; all the other vessels gradually but almost imperceptibly setting to leeward of it.
These several circumstances struck Sir Gervaise, the moment
his foot touched the poop, where he found Greenly keeping
an anxious look-out on the state of the weather and the condition of his own ship; leaning at the same time, against the
spanker-boom to steady himself in the gusts of the gale. The
vice-admiral braced his own well-knit and compact frame, by
spreading his legs; then he turned his handsome but weatherbeaten face towards the line, scanning each ship in succession,
as she lay over to the wind, and came wallowing on, shoving
aside vast mounds of water with her bows, her masts describing short arcs in the air, and her hull rolling to windward, and
lurching, as if boring her way through the ocean. Galleygo,
who never regarded himself as a steward in a gale of wind, was
the only other person on the poop, whither he went at pleasure by a sort of imprescriptibly right.
“Well done, old Planter!” cried Sir Gervaise, heartily, as
soon as his eye had taken in the leading peculiarities of the
view. “You see, Greenly, she has every body but old Parker to
leeward, and she would have him there, too, but he would carry every stick he has, out of the Carnatic, rather than not keep
his berth. Look at Master Morganic; he has his main course
close-reefed on the Achilles, to luff into his station, and I’ll
warrant you will get a good six months’ wear out of that ship
in this one gale; loosening her knees, and jerking her spars like
so many whip-handles; and all for love of the new fashion of
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
rigging an English two-decker like an Algerian xebec! Well,
let him tug his way up to windward, Bond-street fashion, if he
likes the fun. What has become of the Chloe, Greenly?”
“Here she is, sir, quite a league on our lee-bow, looking out,
according to orders.”
“Ay, that is her work, and she’ll do it effectually. – But I
don’t see the Driver!”
“She’s dead ahead sir,” answered Greenly, smiling; “her orders being rather more difficult of execution. Her station
would be off yonder to windward, half a league ahead of us;
but it’s no easy matter to get into that position, Sir Gervaise,
when the Plantagenet is really in earnest.”
Sir Gervaise laughed, and rubbed his hands, then he
turned to look for the Active, the only other vessel of his division. This little cutter was dancing over the seas, half the time
under water, notwithstanding, under the head of her mainsail, broad off, on the admiral’s weather-beam; finding no difficulty in maintaining her station there, in the absence of all
top-hamper, and favoured by the lowness of her hull. After
this he glanced upward at the sails and spars of the Plantagenet, which he studied closely.
“No signs of de Vervillin, hey! Greenly?” the admiral asked,
when his survey of the whole fleet had ended. “I was in hopes
we might see something of him, when the light returned this
morning.”
“Perhaps it is quite as well as it is, Sir Gervaise,” returned
the captain. “We could do little besides look at each other, in
this gale, and Admiral Bluewater ought to join before I should
like even to do that.”
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THE TWO ADMIRALS
“Think you so, Master Greenly! – There you are mistaken,
then; for I’d lie by him, were I alone in this ship, that I might
know where he was to be found as soon as the weather would
permit us to have something to say to him.”
These words were scarcely uttered, when the look-out in
the forward cross-trees, shouted at the top of his voice, “sailho!” At the next instant the Chloe fired a gun, the report of
which was just heard amid the roaring of the gale, though
the smoke was distinctly seen floating above the mists of the
ocean; she also set a signal at her naked mizzen-top-gallantmast-head.
“Run below, young gentleman,” said the vice-admiral, advancing to the break of the poop and speaking to a midshipman on the quarter-deck; “and desire Mr. Bunting to make his
appearance. The Chloe signals us – tell him not to look for his
knee-buckles.”
A century since, the last injunction, though still so much in
use on ship-board, was far more literal than it is to-day, nearly
all classes of men possessing the articles in question, though
not invariably wearing them when at sea. The midshipman
dove below, however, as soon as the words were out of his superior’s mouth; and, in a very few minutes, Bunting appeared,
having actually stopped on the main-deck ladder to assume
his coat, lest he might too unceremoniously invade the sacred
precincts of the quarter-deck, in his shirt-sleeves.
“There it is, Bunting,” said Sir Gervaise, handing the lieutenant the glass; “two hundred and twenty-seven – ‘a large
sail ahead,’ if I remember right.”
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JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
“No, Sir Gervaise, ‘sails ahead;’ the number of them to follow. Hoist the answering flag, quarter-master.”
“So much the better! So much the better, Bunting! The number to follow? Well, we’ll follow the number, let it be greater
or smaller. Come, sirrah, bear a hand up with your answering
flag.”
The usual signal that the message was understood was now
run up between the masts, and instantly hauled down again,
the flags seen in the Chloe descending at the same moment.
“Now for the number of the sails, ahead,” said Sir Gervaise,
as he, Greenly, and Bunting, each levelled a glass at the frigate, on board which the next signal was momentarily expected.
“Eleven, by George!”
“No, Sir Gervaise,” exclaimed Greenly, “I know better
than that. Red above, and blue beneath, with the distinguishing pennant beneath, make fourteen, in our books, now!”
“Well, sir, if they are forty, we’ll go nearer and see of what
sort of stuff they are made. Show your answering flag, Bunting,
that we may know what else the Chloe has to tell us.”
This was done, the frigate hauling down her signals in
haste, and showing a new set as soon as possible.
“What now, Bunting? – what now, Greenly?” demanded Sir
Gervaise, a sea having struck the side of the ship and thrown
so much spray into his face as to reduce him to the necessity
of using his pocket-handkerchief, at the very moment he was
anxious to be looking through his glass. “What do you make
of that, gentlemen?”
“I make out the number to be 382,” answered Greenly;
“but what it means, I know not.”
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