"It is better as it is, Dick—if any thing that has so sad a termination can be well—yes, it is better as it is; you have fallen at my side, as it were. We will think or talk no more of this."
"We have been friends, and close friends too, for a long period, Gervaise," returned Bluewater, stretching his arm from the bed, with the long, thin fingers of the hand extended to meet the other's grasp; "yet, I cannot recall an act of yours which I can justly lay to heart, as unkind, or untrue."
"God forgive me, if you can—I hope not, Dick; most sincerely do I hope not. It would give me great pain to believe it."
"You have no cause for self-reproach. In no one act or thought can you justly accuse yourself with injuring me. I should die much happier could I say the same of myself, Oakes!"
"Thought!—Dick?—Thought! You never meditated aught against me in your whole life. The love you bear me, is the true reason why you lie there, at this blessed moment."
"It is grateful to find that I have been understood. I am deeply indebted to you, Oakes, for declining to signal me and my division down, when I foolishly requested that untimely forbearance. I was then suffering an anguish of mind, to which any pain of the body I may now endure, is an elysium; your self-denial gave time—"
"For the heart to prompt you to that which your feelings yearned to do from the first, Bluewater," interrupted Sir Gervaise. "And, now, as your commanding officer, I enjoin silence on this subject, for ever."
"I will endeavour to obey. It will not be long, Oakes, that I shall remain under your orders," added the rear-admiral, with a painful smile. "There should be no charge of mutiny against me in the last act of my life. You ought to forgive the one sin of omission, when you remember how much and how completely my will has been subject to yours, during the last five-and-thirty years,—how little my mind has matured a professional thought that yours has not originated!"
"Speak no more of 'forgive,' I charge you, Dick. That you have shown a girl-like docility in obeying all my orders, too, is a truth I will aver before God and man; but when it comes to mind, I am far from asserting that mine has had the mastery. I do believe, could the truth he ascertained, it would be found that I am, at this blessed moment, enjoying a professional reputation, which is more than half due to you."
"It matters little, now, Gervaise—it matters little, now. We were two light-hearted and gay lads, Oakes, when we first met as boys, fresh from school, and merry as health and spirits could make us."