“What would you suggest, my lord,” said he, “to make the Navy popular? The lay opinion, given an intelligence such as yours, is often valuable in these matters.”
His lordship, exquisitely flattered, sat up.
“I should offer a handthome bounty, Thir,” said he—with perhaps some vivid recollection of personal sufferings endured in the Channel—“to the man who should devith or invent a thertain cure for thea-thickneth.”
Captain Stone, regardless of his company, burst into a roar of laughter.
“By Gog, your Highness!” cried he, “here’s the pressman for our money. To make the Navy popular, quotha—give them stomach for it! Aye, why not? And lace our sails with silver twist, and hang a silken tassel at the main, and pipe to quarters on a hurdy-gurdy! O, we’ll have our Captain’s monkey yet with lovelocks to his head and white ribbons to his shoon!”
His lordship, on whom this pickaxe had wrought at last, flushed up to the eyes with anger and resentment. He rose to his feet.
“Thith monthtruth inthult,” he began; “I crave your Highnetheth grath——” and stuck for lack of words.
The Duke, whose cue was nothing if not propitiation, turned in some genuine wrath on the seaman.
“You forget yourself, sir,” he said sternly. “You will favour me by retiring. Waiving the question of respect for his lordship’s opinions, you fail in it to me, who invited them. Nor need you be so cocksure in your own. Who knows what inclinations might have served us but for dread of that malady! You must go.”
The Captain, not venturing to remonstrate, but seeing, as he thought, through the other’s motive, obeyed, and so much without rancour that he could not forbear some subdued sputtering laughter as he left the room—an ebullition which, in fact, found its secret response in the Duke’s own bosom. He addressed himself, the man gone, with a rather twinkling blandishment to his remaining guest.