"Last year, for my services at the blockade of Ancona," replied Cranky briefly, and was moving on, as he hated all foreigners with a hearty old English hatred, viewing them as a Skye terrier does rats.
"Oh, you served with the allied Russian, Turkish, and British squadrons?" continued the emperor.
"Belay, you lubber, and overhaul your speech again; don't name the British fleet last," said Cranky, totally ignorant of whom he was addressing; but the Emperor Paul laughed heartily.
"Take care, sir," said Frederick William, smiling; "you are addressing His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias."
Confounded on hearing this, Cranky drew back, blushed very red, and taking off his rusty cocked hat, made a profound sea bow.
"And this gentleman," added the emperor, who was very much amused, "is his Prussian Majesty, Frederick William II."
On hearing this, Cranky conceived that they were bantering him; so he stuck his cocked hat fiercely over his solitary eye, and sputtered out,—
"'Vast, you lubbers! I don't choose to be made game of by you, or such as you,—so sheer off, or I'll trounce you both, for insulting the captain of a British frigate!"
And so he swaggered off, with his left hand upon the brass hilt of his old hanger.
Poor Tom Cranky has long since been at rest from his labours by sea and land; but he lived long about Greenwich, where he was a great authority upon all matters pertaining to ships and salt water,—the lion of a little naval club, and was wont to boast,—