They made their way along the coast leisurely. Every morning the cadets were made to go aloft and over all the rigging for exercise, and they did it like cats. Brydell excelled at this from the first with the utmost smartness. Esdaile, on the contrary, although his class rank was high, did not do at all well in the practical exercises of seamanship. He was growing more unpopular every day with his class, and among the sailors he was hated.
The blue jackets who worked side by side with the cadets on the summer’s cruise were generally fine seamen and honest fellows, and a pleasant feeling existed between them and the cadets, although the distance between an embryo officer and a sailor was necessarily strictly preserved. Brydell enjoyed nothing more than his turn at the wheel, when, with a foremast man, he had his watch.
All sailors can tell plenty of interesting things, and as they all liked Brydell they made the watch pass quickly enough. Not so was it with Esdaile. He treated the sailors with a superciliousness and selfish indifference that made them hate him, and they sometimes took a sly revenge on him by letting things go wrong, for which he was responsible, without telling him.
When he was sharply called to account by the officer of the deck or the executive, there was a universal grin in the fok’sle. With the other cadets the sailors were only anxious to shield them, if anything did go awry. Brydell and Esdaile were upon the most distant terms, and neither showed any disposition to change them.
After a leisurely cruise along the coast they reached Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was a soft July evening, and the wind was fair for them to enter the difficult harbor. Brydell, with Atkins, a very smart sailor, was at the wheel when they were weathering the Point.
It requires skilful seamanship for a sailing vessel to weather this dangerous point, where the slightest mistake in the moment to put the helm up or down will place a ship on the rocks. The captain trusted nobody but himself to bring the frigate in. The ship, with all her light canvas set, floated lightly on almost like a phantom ship.
The Piscataqua is one of the most beautiful rivers on the Atlantic coast, and in the pale sunset glow the water shimmered like a sea of opal. The white-winged Constellation came on and on, without tacking, and seemed literally rushing upon her doom as the rocky point reared itself menacingly in her way. But when so near that her bowsprit almost touched the rock, the captain, who stood at the steersman’s side, gave the word, and the ship, answering her helm beautifully, came about like magic and rounded the dangerous point.
In a little while she reached her anchorage, and came to anchor in true man-of-war style, her sails being furled and her anchors dropped in an inconceivably short time.
Brydell was at that happy age when every change seems delightful, and he was just as glad to get ashore at Portsmouth as if he had not enjoyed every moment when he was actually cruising.
He looked forward with the greatest pleasure to seeing his old friend Grubb, and only regretted the forms which must be observed between an officer and a private. Grubb was such a sensible, self-respecting fellow that he was not at all likely to let Brydell’s natural generosity lead him beyond the right point with a subordinate.