"Ay, and we like you all the better, Sir Gervaise, for not giving us up when the money came. Now Lord Morganic was a captain when he succeeded, and we think much less of that."
"Morganic remains in service, to teach us how to stay top-masts and paint figure-heads;" observed Sir Gervaise, a little drily. "And yet the fellow handled his ship well to-day; making much better weather of it than I feared he would be able to do."
"I hear we are likely to get another duke in the navy, sir; it's not often we catch one of that high rank."
Sir Gervaise cared much less for things of this sort than Bluewater, but he naturally cast a glance at the speaker, as this was said, as much as to ask whom he meant.
"They tell me, sir, that Lord Montresor, the elder brother of the boy in the Cæsar, is in a bad way, and Lord Geoffrey stands next to the succession. I think there is too much stuff in him to quit us now he is almost fit to get his commission."
"True, Bluewater has that boy of high hopes and promise with him, too;" answered Sir Gervaise in a musing manner, unconscious of what he said. "God send he may not forget that, among other things!"
"I don't think rank makes any difference with Admiral Bluewater, or Captain Stowel. The nobles are worked up in their ship, as well as the humblest reefer of them all. Here is Bunting, sir, to tell us something."'
Sir Gervaise started from a fit of abstraction, and, turning, he saw his signal-officer ready to report.
"The Druid has answered properly, Sir Gervaise, and has already hauled up so close that I think she will luff through the line, though it may be astern of the Carnatic."
"And the prize, Bunting? Have you signalled the prize, as I told you to do?"