Set off for your course. I’ll pursue with my rain.
“‘You cannot but know my command o’er July;
Thenceforward I’ll triumph in showing my powers;
Shift your race as you will, it shall never be dry,
The curse upon Venta is July in showers.’”
CHAPTER XVIII
TWO ADMIRALS
We have shown, so far as is possible, the influence that the lives of her two sailor brothers had upon the writings of Jane Austen. It now only remains to show how both of them, in their different ways, fulfilled her hopes for them. This can be best done by a brief summary of the chief events in their careers. At the time of her death they were men on either side of forty. Francis lived to be ninety-one, and Charles to be seventy-three, so both had many more years of activity and service before them.
In 1826 Charles was again on the West Indies station. Here he stayed for more than two years, and was chiefly employed in suppressing the slave-trade. He was always very happy in the management of crews. It was partly owing to his more than usual care in this respect while stationed here on board the Aurora, and partly to his general activity as second in command, that he gained his appointment as Flag-Captain to Admiral Colpoys in the Winchester on the same station in 1828. He was invalided home in 1830, as the result of a severe accident. This prevented him from being again employed until 1838, when he was appointed to the Bellerophon, still only a Captain after nearly thirty years’ service in that rank.
Memo 12th May, 1838