“The Miss Musgroves were just fetching the ‘Navy List’ (their own ‘Navy List,’ the first there had ever been at Uppercross), and sitting down together to pore over it, with the professed view of finding out the ships which Captain Wentworth had commanded.
“‘Your first was the Asp, I remember. We will look for the Asp.’
“‘You will not find her there. Quite worn out and broken up. I was the last man who commanded her. Hardly fit for service then. Reported fit for home service for a year or two, and so I was sent off to the West Indies.’
“The girls looked all amazement.
“‘The Admiralty,’ he continued, ‘entertain themselves now and then with sending a few hundred men to sea in a ship not fit to be employed. But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.’
“‘Phoo! phoo!’ cried the Admiral. ‘What stuff these young fellows talk! Never was there a better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built sloop you would not see her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more interest than his.’
“‘I felt my luck, Admiral, I assure you,’ replied Captain Wentworth seriously. ‘I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can desire. It was a great object with me at the time to be at sea; a very great object. I wanted to be doing something.’
“‘To be sure you did. What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together? If a man has not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again.’
“‘But, Captain Wentworth,’ cried Louisa, ‘how vexed you must have been when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you.’
“‘I knew pretty well what she was before that day,’ said he, smiling. ‘I had no more discoveries to make than you would have as to the fashion and strength of an old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among half your acquaintance ever since you could remember, and which at last on some very wet day is lent to yourself. Ah! she was a dear old Asp to me. She did all I wanted. I knew she would. I knew that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted. I brought her into Plymouth; and here was another instance of luck. We had not been six hours in the Sound when a gale came on which lasted four days and four nights, and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time, our touch with the Great Nation not having improved our condition. Four and twenty hours later and I should only have been a gallant Captain Wentworth in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about me.’