A Roving Commission; Or, Through the Black Insurrection at Hayti

by G. A. Henty

"I am awfully sorry that you are going, Glover," Turnbull said. "Of course it is a great pull for me being appointed to the command, but I was very jolly and happy as I was. I don't think there ever was a pleasanter party on board one of his majesty's ships. However, of course it is a great lift for me. I shall try to keep things going as comfortably as you did."

"I have no doubt that you will do that, Turnbull, and you have an able ally in Doyle."

"Doyle was inconsolable when I came on board yesterday and told him that you were going home in the Spartane, and that I was to have the command."

"It is the worst news that I have heard for many a day," Doyle had said. "You are very well, Turnbull, and I have no sort of complaint to make of you, but I am afraid that the luck will go with Glover. It is his luck and not the ship's; whatever he has put his hand to has turned out well. I don't say that he has not done his work as well as it could be done, but there is no doubt that luck is everything. If one of the Agile's guns had knocked away a mast or spar from the Arrow it would have been all up with you; and again, had a shot from the frigate crippled us, she would have been after taking the Agile into a French port instead of our bringing her in here."

"Yes, but then you see that upon both occasions Glover put his craft where it was difficult to get their guns to bear on her."

"Yes, yes, I know that; but that does not alter it a bit. If there had been only one shot fired, and had we been an unlucky boat, it would, sure enough, have brought one of the spars about our ears."

"Well, Doyle, it may be that it was my luck, and not Glover's, that pulled us through. You see, I should have been shot or had my throat cut by the pirates if we had been taken by them, so possibly I am the good genius of the boat; or it may be Lippincott."

"Botheration to you!" the Irishman said, as he saw by a twinkle in Turnbull's eye that he was really chaffing him; "there is one thing certain, if you get wounded and fall into my hands, you will not regard that as a matter of luck."

"Well, at any rate, doctor, Glover told me half an hour ago of a piece of luck in which none of us here can share. He is engaged to that very pretty French girl whom he is always calling on when we are in port."

"I thought that was what would come of it, Turnbull," Lippincott said; "it would be rum if she hadn't fallen in love with him after all that he did for her."