"Have your people suffered, sir?"
"Two killed and seven wounded, Sir Gervaise. Good lads, most of 'em; but enough like 'em remain."
"I understand, then, Captain Parker, that you report the Carnatic fit for any service?"
"As much so as my poor abilities enable me to make her, Sir Gervaise Oakes," answered the other, a little alarmed at the formality and precision of the question. "Meet her with the helm—meet her with the helm."
All this passed while the Carnatic was making her half-board, and, the helm being righted, she now slowly and majestically fell off with her broadside to the admiral, gathering way as her canvass began to draw again. At this instant, when the yard-arms of the two ships were about a hundred feet asunder, and just as the Carnatic drew up fairly abeam, Sir Gervaise Oakes raised his hat, stepped quickly to the side of the poop, waved his hand for silence, and spoke with a distinctness that rendered his words audible to all in both vessels.
"Captain Parker," he said, "I wish, publicly, to thank you for your noble conduct this day. I have always said a surer support could never follow a commander-in-chief into battle; you have more than proved my opinion to be true. I wish, publicly, to thank you, sir."
"Sir Gervaise—I cannot express—God bless you, Sir Gervaise!"
"I have but one fault to find with you, sir, and that is easily pardoned."
"I'm sure I hope so, sir."
"You handled your ship so rapidly and so surely, that we had hardly time to get out of the way of your guns!"