"Whatever his faults, he was too big to be anything but kind to a woman, was Ted."
"I remember the day when his resignation was so promptly accepted by the Admiralty. He walked up to the Admiral—Farquhar it was, on the Bolingbroke—and said: 'Admiral, if I'd been in your place I'd have done the same. I ought to resign, and I have. Yet if I had to do it over again, I'd be the same. I don't repent. I'm out of the Navy now, and it doesn't make any difference what I say, so I'll have my preachment out. If I were Admiral Farquhar, and you were Edward Debney, ex-commander, I'd say: "Debney, you're a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer."'
"The Admiral liked Edward, in spite of all, better than any man in the Squadron, for Ted's brains were worth those of any half-dozen officers he had. He simply choked, and then, before the whole ship, dropped both hands on his shoulders, and said: 'Debney, you're a damned good fellow and a damned bad officer, and I wish to God you were a damned bad fellow and a damned good officer—for then there were no need to part.' At that they parted. But as Edward was leaving, the Admiral came forward again, and said: 'Where are you going, Debney?' 'I'm going nowhere, sir,' Ted answered. 'I'm being tossed into strange waters—a lone corvette of no squadron.' He stopped, smiled, and then said—it was so like him, for, with all his wildness, he had the tastes of a student: 'You remember that passage in Isaiah, sir, "And God shall turn upon them violently, and toss them like a ball into a large country"?'
"There wasn't a man but had a kind thought for him as he left, and there was rain in the eyes of more than one A.B. Well, from that day he disappeared, and no one has seen him since. God knows where he is; but I was thinking, as I looked out there to the setting sun, that his wild spirit would naturally turn to the South, for civilised places had no charm for him."
"I never knew quite why he had to leave the Navy."
"He opened fire on a French frigate off Tahiti which was boring holes in an opium smuggler."
Mostyn laughed. "Of course; and how like Ted it was—an instinct to side with the weakest."
"Yes, coupled with the fact that the Frenchman's act was mere brutality, and had not sufficient motive or justification. So Ted pitched into him."
"Did the smuggler fly the British flag?"
"No, the American; and it was only the intervention of the United States which prevented serious international trouble. Out of the affair came Ted a shipwreck."