“Bless my soul, Vernon! Is that you, my lad, hey?” he roared out, making a dandified exquisite, who was just then lounging past us, jump into the gutter and soil his polished patent leathers in nervous alarm. “Glad to see me, you said? Stuff and nonsense, you rascal—you’re not half so pleased as I am to clap my eyes on you again! Gad, you young scamp, why, it seems only the other day when I sent you to the mast-head, you remember, when you were a middy with me in the Neptune? It was for cutting off the tail of my dog Ponto, and you said—though that was all moonshine, of course—you did it to cure him of fits! By George! what a terrible young scapegrace you were, to be sure, Vernon, always in mischief from sunrise to gunfire, and always at loggerheads with my first lieutenant and the master, poor old Cosine!”
Chapter Two.
The Admiral speaks his Mind.
I had been fidgeting all the time the old gentleman was speaking squeezing Dad’s hand in order to attract his attention and make him tell me who his old friend was; but, for the moment, he was too much taken up with the veteran’s hearty greeting to give ear to me.
At last, however, in response to another squeeze of my hand, he bent down towards me, expecting, no doubt, some such inquiry.
“Who is it, Dad?” I whispered, dying with curiosity. “Who is it?”
“Admiral Sir Charles Napier, Jack,” he replied, under his breath, “late commander-in-chief of the Baltic Fleet.”
I doffed my cap at once, for I had often heard my father mention the name of the gallant old sailor before, though I hardly expected to see him in such a guise.