"Your business, sir! what has happened to Sir Gervaise?" repeated Bluewater, shaking his long fore-finger menacingly, at the steward.
"We are as well, Admiral Blue, as the hour we came over the Planter's side. Sir Jarvy will carry sail with the best on 'em, I'll answer for it, whether the ship floats in old Port Oporto, or in a brewer's vat. Let Sir Jarvy alone for them tricks—he wasn't a young gentleman, for nothing."
"Have a moment's patience, sir," put in Wycherly, "and I will go myself, and ascertain the truth."
"I shall make but another inquiry," continued Admiral Bluewater, as Wycherly left the room.
"Why, d'ye see, your honour, old Sir Wycherly, who is commander-in-chief, along shore here, has capsized in consequence of carrying sail too hard, in company with younger craft; and they're now warping him into dock to be overhauled."
"Is this all!—that was a result to be expected, in such a debauch. You need not have put on so ominous a face, for this, Galleygo."
"No, sir, so I thought, myself; and I only tried to look as melancholy as a young gentleman who is sent below to report a topgallant-mast over the side, or a studding-sail-boom gone in the iron. D'ye remember the time, Admiral Blue, when you thought to luff up on the old Planter's weather-quarter, and get between her and the French ninety on three decks, and how your stu'n-sails went, one a'ter another, just like so many musherrooms breaking in peeling?"
Galleygo, who was apt to draw his images from his two trades, might have talked on an hour, without interruption; for, while he was uttering the above sentence, Wycherly returned, and reported that their host was seriously, even dangerously ill. While doing the honours of his table, he had been seized with a fit, which the vicar, a noted three-bottle man, feared was apoplexy. Mr. Rotherham had bled the patient, who was already a little better, and an express had been sent for a medical man. As a matter of course, the convives had left the table, and alarm was frightening the servants into sobriety. At Mrs. Dutton's earnest request, Wycherly immediately left the room again, forcing Galleygo out before him, with a view to get more accurate information concerning the baronet's real situation; both the mother and daughter feeling a real affection for Sir Wycherly; the kind old man having won their hearts by his habitual benevolence, and a constant concern for their welfare.
"Sic transit gloria mundi," muttered Admiral Bluewater, as he threw his tall person, in his own careless manner, on a chair, in a dark corner of the room. "This baronet has fallen from his throne, in a moment of seeming prosperity and revelry; why may not another do the same?"
Mrs. Dutton heard the voice, without distinguishing the words, and she felt distressed at the idea that one whom she so much respected and loved, might be judged of harshly, by a man of the rear-admiral's character.