"Nevertheless it must be owned that they make gallant and useful officers, Stowel."
"No doubt they do, sir; but gallant and useful men are not scarce anywhere. You and I are too old and too experienced, Admiral Bluewater, to put any faith in the notion that courage belongs to any particular part of the world, or usefulness either. I never fought a Frenchman yet that I thought a coward; and, in my judgment, there are brave men enough in England, to command all her ships, and to fight them too."
"Let this be so, Stowel, still we must take things as they come. What do you think of the night?"
"Dirty enough before morning, I should think, sir, though it is a little out of rule, that it does not rain with this wind, already. The next time we come-to, Admiral Bluewater, I intend to anchor with a shorter scope of cable than we have been doing lately; for, I begin to think there is no use in wetting so many yarns in the summer months. They tell me the York brings up always on forty fathoms."
"That's a short range, I should think, for a heavy ship. But here is a visiter."
The sentinel opened the cabin-door, and Lord Geoffrey, with his cap fastened to his head by a pocket-handkerchief, and his face red with exposure to the wind, entered the cabin.
"Well," said Bluewater, quietly; "what is the report from aloft?"
"The Dover is running down athwart our forefoot, and nearing us fast, sir," returned the midshipman. "The York is close on our weather-beam, edging in to her station; but I can make out nothing ahead of us, though I was on the yard twenty minutes."
"Did you look well on the weather-beam, and thence forward to the lee-bow?"
"I did, sir; if any light is in view, better eyes than mine must find it."