bay, apparently heading toward the passage between Capri and the Point of Campanella, bound to Sicily.  This ship might easily have weathered the island; but her commander, an easy sort of person, chose to make a fair wind of it from the start, and he thought, by hugging the coast, he might possibly benefit by the land-breeze during the night, trusting to the zephyr that was then blowing to carry him across the Gulf of Salerno.  A frigate, too, shot out of the fleet, under her staysails, as soon as the westerly wind made; but she had dropped an anchor under-foot, and seemed to wait some preparation, or orders, before taking her departure; her captain being at that moment on board the flag-ship, on duty with the rear-admiral.  This was the Proserpine thirty-six, Captain Cuffe, a vessel and an officer that are already both acquaintances of the reader.  About an hour before the present scene opens, Captain Cuffe, in fact, had been called on board the Foudroyant by signal, where he had found a small, sallow-looking, slightly-built man, with his right arm wanting, pacing the deck of the fore-cabin, impatient for his appearance.

“Well, Cuffe,” said this uninviting-looking personage, twitching the stump of the maimed arm, “I see you are out of the flock; are you all ready for sailing?”

“We have one boat ashore after letters, my lord; as soon as she comes off we shall lift our anchor, which is only under-foot.”

“Very well—­I have sent the Ringdove to the southward on the same errand, and I see she is half a league from the anchorage on her way already.  This Mr. Griffin appears to be a fine young man—­I like his account of the way he handled his fire-ship; though the French scoundrel did contrive to escape!  After all, this Rowl E—­E—­how do you pronounce the fellow’s name, Cuffe?  I never can make anything out of their gibberish—­”

“Why, to own the truth, Sir Horatio—­I beg pardon—­my lord—­there is something in the English grain of my feelings that would prevent my ever learning French, had I been born and brought up in Paris.  There is too much Saxon in me to swallow words that half the time have no meaning.”

“I like you all the better for that, Cuffe,” answered the admiral, smiling, a change that converted a countenance that was almost ugly when in a state of rest into one that was almost handsome—­a peculiarity that is by no means of rare occurrence, when a strong will gives expression to the features, and the heart, at bottom, is really sound.  “An Englishman has no business with any Gallic tendencies.  This young Mr. Griffin seems to have spirit; and I look upon it always as a good sign when a young man volunteers for a desperate thing of this sort—­but he tells me he is only second; where was your first all the while?”

“Why, my lord, he got a little hurt in the brush of the morning; and I would not let him go, as a matter of course.  His name is Winchester; I think you must remember him as junior of the Captain, at the affair off St. Vincent.  Miller[4] had a good opinion of him; and when I went from the Arrow to the Proserpine he got him sent as my second.  The death of poor Drury made him first in the natural way.”