The reader will remember that the wind had not become fresh when Sir Gervaise Oakes got into his barge, with the intention of carrying his fleet to sea. A retrospective glance at the state of the weather, will become necessary to the reader, therefore, in carrying his mind back to that precise period whither it has now become our duty to transport him in imagination.
The vice-admiral governed a fleet on principles very different from those of Bluewater. While the last left so much to the commanders of the different vessels, his friend looked into every thing himself. The details of the service he knew were indispensable to success on a larger scale, and his active mind descended into all these minutiæ, to a degree sometimes, that annoyed his captains. On the whole, however, he was sufficiently observant of that formidable barrier to excessive familiarity, and that great promoter of heart-burnings in a squadron, naval etiquette, to prevent any thing like serious misunderstandings, and the best feelings prevailed between him and the several magnates under his orders. Perhaps the circumstance that he was a fighting admiral contributed to this internal tranquillity; for, it has been often remarked, that armies and fleets will both tolerate more in leaders that give them plenty to do with the enemy, than in commanders who leave them inactive and less exposed. The constant encounters with the foe would seem to let out all the superfluous quarrelsome tendencies. Nelson, to a certain extent, was an example of this influence in the English marine, Suffren[1] in that of France, and Preble, to a much greater degree than in either of the other cases, in our own. At all events, while most of his captains sensibly felt themselves less of commanders, while Sir Gervaise was on board or around their ships, than when he was in the cabin of the Plantagenet, the peace was rarely broken between them, and he was generally beloved as well as obeyed. Bluewater was a more invariable favourite, perhaps, though scarcely as much respected; and certainly not half as much feared.
On the present occasion, the vice-admiral did not pull through the fleet, without discovering the peculiar propensity to which we have alluded. In passing one of the ships, he made a sign to his coxswain to cause the boat's crew to lay on their oars, when he hailed the vessel, and the following dialogue occurred.
"Carnatic, ahoy!" cried the admiral.
"Sir," exclaimed the officer of the deck, jumping on a quarter-deck gun, and raising his hat.
"Is Captain Parker on board, sir?"
"He is, Sir Gervaise; will you see him, sir?"
A nod of the head sufficed to bring the said Captain Parker on deck, and to the gangway, where he could converse with his superior, without inconvenience to either.
"How do you do, Captain Parker?"—a certain sign Sir Gervaise meant to rap the other over the knuckles, else would it have been Parker."—How do you do, Captain Parker? I am sorry to see you have got your ship too much down by the head, sir. She'll steer off the wind, like a colt when he first feels the bridle; now with his head on one side, and now on the other. You know I like a compact line, and straight wakes, sir."
"I am well aware of that, Sir Gervaise," returned Parker, a gray-headed, meek old man, who had fought his way up from the forecastle to his present honourable station, and, who, though brave as a lion before the enemy, had a particular dread of all his commanders; "but we have been obliged to use more water aft than we could wish, on account of the tiers. We shall coil away the cables anew, and come at some of the leaguers forward, and bring all right again, in a week, I hope, sir."