"You had; and if you hadn't, we'd have talked at you some."
Jackson laughed. "What! 'Too proud to fight,' and all that sort of thing? Yes, we'd have deserved it too. I say, what a shame Admiral Mahan died right at the beginning! There's nobody to take his place and write this war up."
"Yes, he'd have been over here first tap of the gong. And he'd have seen it all for himself, and given you Britishers and us lectures on the war of 1812—and every other war too."
"Yes, it's a great pity. He taught us what sea-power was, and till then we hardly knew we had it at all."
"Well, he taught you enough to get us busy mailing you paper about the blockade last year."
Jackson grinned. "You couldn't say much. You made all the precedents yourselves when you blockaded the South in '61. We only had to refer you to your own letters to get out of the argument."
The First Lieutenant beckoned for the cigar box again. "You knew too much diplomatic work for us in those days. We were new to that card game. But I'd sooner hear our talk now than the sort of gentle breathing of your folks when it comes to diplomacy."
"Never mind," said Jackson. "We're getting better. We'll have an autocracy, like you, before the war's over, instead of the democracy we've got now."
The circle settled down and waited. This was evidently not an unarmed foe, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon game.
"Amurrica's the only real democracy in the universe," said an incautious voice. Two heads turned towards the speaker, and several pairs of eyes spoke volumes.