“Oh, it must be the Admiral’s barge!” cried Zoe, drawing upon her recollections of sea-stories read in her youth. “Do please let me look. Isn’t it splendid? Doesn’t it make you feel exactly like Nelson?”
“In a steam-launch? Particularly so,” responded Wylie, surrendering the glass, which Zoe monopolised until the arrival of Mr Suter, bearing a cordial invitation from the Admiral to the son of his old friend to visit him on board the flagship. Going down to the renovated pier, they were received by an officer whose uniform, as Prince Romanos expressed it, “exhibited something more of ornamentation” than that of Lieutenant Cotway, and who at once conciliated the scruples and rejoiced the hearts of the guards by insisting that the invitation included them. Welcomed, after the miraculously short voyage, as honoured guests, the adventurers stood at length on the deck of the Magniloquent, there to be received in state by Admiral Essiter, a small spruce man with a plum-coloured complexion, and the air of finding his own inscrutable thoughts faintly amusing. The expression was probably habitual, not due to the circumstances of the occasion, and Zoe had the idea that, like the protective colouring of some animals, it must be assumable at pleasure, for watching her host keenly at lunch, she saw that a look of anxiety sometimes took its place, though the mask went on again as soon as the Admiral perceived that he was observed. When the meal was over, he asked Maurice to give him a quarter of an hour in his cabin, requesting his officers to entertain the rest of the party, even as the astonished Emathian guards were being initiated into the wonders of the great ship by bands of grinning seamen and marines. To the Admiral’s surprise, Prince Romanos appeared to consider himself included in the invitation given to Maurice.
“Your friend doesn’t speak English, perhaps?” said the host, courteously waving Prince Romanos back. “Will you tell him that Captain Bryson will show him over the ship?”
“I thank you—Mr Admiral,” Prince Romanos was wavering between “M. l’Amiral” and Maurice’s “Admiral,” which sounded to him disagreeably curt; “but I understand perfectly. Only I conceive myself to possess an interest not inferior to that of Prince Theophanis in the subject of your discussion.”
“Prince Christodoridi is the rival heir,” explained Maurice, as the Admiral glanced inquiringly towards him. “I think myself that his claims have not a shadow of foundation, and he, of course, thinks the same of mine, but we are pledged not to fight it out until Emathia is free.”
“Which puts it off for a few hundred years or so? Well, if you don’t mind his being present, it’s not for me to object. You are your father all over. There was a story—I don’t guarantee its truth, mind—that when the square was broken at El Met, he was attacked by an Arab with a long spear, who gave him all he could do to defend himself. Somehow or other, he managed to twist the spear out of the fellow’s grip. Did he finish him off when he had him at his mercy? Not he; he waited till he got up, and handed him back the spear to go on with.”
“No, Admiral; that’s a little too stiff,” said Maurice.
“Well,” said the Admiral deliberately, “I never believed it myself till to-day. Now I do. But, pray, what is the meaning of the farce you are playing in that old rat-hole up yonder, masquerading as a Greek prince, as if your honest English ancestors were not good enough for you?”
“Unfortunately they were not English; they were Greek too, descendants of the last Emperor of the East. I have merely returned to the original form of our name.”
“Merely? and what about your assumption of sovereignty?”