The Two Admirals

by James Fenimore Cooper

"Well, Greenly," he asked, "what do you make of them, now?—According to my reckoning, there are thirteen of the line, two frigates, four corvettes, and a lugger; or twenty sail in all."

"There can be no doubt of the twenty sail, Sir Gervaise, though the vessels astern are still too distant to speak of their size. I rather think it will turn out fourteen of the line and only three frigates."

"That is rather too much for us, certainly, without Bluewater. His five ships, now, and this westerly position, would make a cheering prospect for us. We might stick by Mr. de Vervillin until it moderated, and then pay our respects to him. What do you say to that, Greenly?"

"That it is of no great moment, Sir Gervaise, so long as the other division is not with us. But yonder are signals flying on board the Active, the Warspite, and the Blenheim."

"Ay, they've something to tell us of the chap astern and to windward. Come, Bunting, give us the news."

"'Stranger in the north-west shows the Druid's number;'" the signal-officer read mechanically from the book.

"The deuce he does! Then Bluewater cannot be far off. Let Dick alone for keeping in his proper place; he has an instinct for a line of battle, and I never knew him fail to be in the very spot I could wish to have him, looking as much at home, as if his ships had all been built there! The Druid's number! The Cæsar and the rest of them are in a line ahead, further north, heading up well to windward even of our own wake. This puts the Comte fairly under our lee."

But Greenly was far from being of a temperament as sanguine as that of the vice-admiral's. He did not like the circumstance of the Druid's being alone visible, and she, too, under what in so heavy a gale, might be deemed a press of canvass. There was no apparent reason for the division's carrying sail so hard, while the frigate would he obliged to do it, did she wish to overtake vessels like the Plantagenet and her consorts. He suggested, therefore, the probability that the ship was alone, and that her object might be to speak them.

"There is something in what you say, Greenly," answered Sir Gervaise, after a minute's reflection; "and we must look into it. If Denham doesn't give us any thing new from the Count to change our plans, it may be well to learn what the Druid is after."

Denham was the commander of the Chloe, which ship, a neat six-and-thirty, was pitching into the heavy seas that now came rolling in heavily from the broad Atlantic, the water streaming from her hawse-holes, as she rose from each plunge, like the spouts of a whale. This vessel, it has been stated, was fully a league ahead and to leeward of the Plantagenet, and consequently so much nearer to the French, who were approaching from that precise quarter of the ocean, in a long single line, like that of the English; a little relieved, however, by the look-out vessels, all of which, in their case, were sailing along on the weather-beam of their friends. The distance was still so great, as to render glasses necessary in getting any very accurate notions of the force and the point of sailing of Monsieur de Vervillin's fleet, the ships astern being yet so remote as to require long practice to speak with any certainty of their characters. In nothing, notwithstanding, was the superior practical seamanship of the English more apparent, than in the manner in which these respective lines were formed. That of Sir Gervaise Oakes was compact, each ship being as near as might be a cable's length distant from her seconds, ahead and astern. This was a point on which the vice-admiral prided himself; and by compelling his captains rigidly to respect their line of sailing, and by keeping the same ships and officers, as much as possible, under his orders, each captain of the fleet had got to know his own vessel's rate of speed, and all the other qualities that were necessary to maintain her precise position. All the ships being weatherly, though some, in a slight degree, were more so than others, it was easy to keep the line in weather like the present, the wind not blowing sufficiently hard to render a few cloths more or less of canvass of any very great moment. If there was a vessel sensibly out of her place, in the entire line, it was the Achilles; Lord Morganic not having had time to get all his forward spars as far aft as they should have been; a circumstance that had knocked him off a little more than had happened to the other vessels. Nevertheless, had an air-line been drawn at this moment, from the mizzen-top of the Plantagenet to that of the Warspite, it would have been found to pass through the spars of quite half the intermediate vessels, and no one of them all would have been a pistol-shot out of the way. As there were six intervals between the vessels, and each interval as near as could be guessed at was a cable's length, the extent of the whole line a little exceeded three-quarters of a mile.