“I will obey the cook if you tell me, father.”
“You shall obey nobody but myself,” returned sir Harry; “—and the lord high admiral,” he added, with a glance upward, and a smile like his son’s.
For that day Clare kept to the captain’s state-room; the next, he went on deck in a midshipman’s uniform, which he wore like a gentleman that could obey orders.
Chapter LXVI.
The End of Clare Skymer’s Boyhood.
His father had a hammock slung for him in the state-room; he could not be parted from him even when they slept.
One night sir Harry, lying awake, heard a movement in the state-room, and got up. It was a still, star-lit night. The frigate was dreaming away northward with all sail set. Through the windows shone the level stars. From a beam above hung a dim lamp. He could see no one. He went to the hammock. There was no boy in it. Then he spied him, kneeling under the stern-windows, with his head down.
“Anything the matter, Clare?” he asked.
“No, father.”
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to say Thank you for my father!”