“Hullo, who’ve we got here?” cried the Admiral, noticing my action and patting my head in recognition of the salute with his snuffy palm. “Your son, Vernon, eh?”
“Yes, Admiral,” said Dad, “this is my boy, Jack.”
“Ha! humph! He’s a smart-looking youngster, Vernon, and the very image of what you were at his age! How old is he?”
“Nearly fourteen now, sir,” answered my father. “I’m afraid, though, Master Jack is rather a small boy for his years, being short and thick-set.”
“Not a serious fault that, Vernon. He’ll, be able to go aloft more nimbly than any of those lamp-post sort of chaps with long legs, who always trip themselves up in the ratlines. Look at me, youngster, I’m not a big man, and yet I’ve not been the worse sailor on that account, I think!”
“True, Sir Charles,” replied Dad with a sly twinkle in his eye, “but we’re not all of the same tough stock and ‘ready—ay, ready’ on all occasions when wanted, though we might be willing enough, to do our duty.”
“Gammon, Vernon, none of your blarney!” growled out the old sea-lion, pretending to be angry, albeit he looked pleased at Dad’s covert allusion to the Napier motto, which he had always endeavoured to act up to. “I’m sick of false compliments, old shipmate. I’ve had plenty of them and to spare from those mealy-mouthed, false-hearted, longshore lubbers in there!”
“What!” exclaimed my father, as the Admiral jerked his head with an expression of contempt in the direction of the club-house he had just left—“you don’t mean to say, sir—”
“Ay! but I do mean to say they’re a lot of confounded hypocrites, by George!” roared out the old sailor, his face flushing to almost a purple hue, while he snatched at another handful of snuff from his waistcoat pocket, and sniffed and snorted like a grampus. “Why, you’ll hardly believe it, Vernon! But, only a couple of years ago, when I was starting for the Baltic, and in high favour with the ministry, those miserable time-servers in there gave a public dinner in my honour in that very club; and now, by George! because things did not go all right, and I wasn’t able to smash-up the Russian fleet as everybody expected I would do, and so I would have done, too, by George! if I’d been allowed my own way, the mean-spirited parasites almost cut me to a man—to a man, by George!”
“It’s a rascally shame, sir,” said my father, getting hot with righteous indignation in sympathy at this scurvy treatment of one whom he had served under, and looked upon as an honoured chief; while I felt so angry myself, that I should have liked to have gone up the steps of the club-house there and then, and dragged down from his proud post the fat, red-liveried porter who was looking down on the veteran from the top of the stairway, regarding that pampered menial as the cause and occasion of the slight of which he complained. “Never mind, though, Admiral! you can well afford to treat their mean conduct with the contempt it deserves; for everybody whose opinion is worth anything knows that Sir Charles Napier won his laurels as a brave and skilful commander long before the Reform Club was founded or the Crimean war thought of. Believe me, sir, history will yet do you justice.”