“I know you do, Cuffe—­I’m sure you do; and I esteem you all the more for it.  It is a part of an Englishman’s religion, in times like these, to hate a Frenchman.  I went across the Channel after the peace of ’83 to learn their language, but had so little sympathy with them, even in peaceable times, as never to be able to make out to write a letter in it, or even to ask intelligibly for the necessaries of life.”

“If you can ask for anything, it far surpasses my efforts; I never can tell head from stern in their dialect.”

“It is an infernal jargon, Cuffe, and has got to be so confused by their academies, and false philosophy and infidelity, that they will shortly be at a loss to understand it themselves.  What sort of names they give their ships, for instance, now they have beheaded their king and denounced their God!  Who ever heard of christening a craft, as you tell me this lugger is named, the ‘Few-Folly’?  I believe I’ve got the picaroon’s title right?”

“Quite right—­Griffin pronounces it so, though he has got to be a little queerish in his own English, by using so much French and Italian.  The young man’s father was a consul; and he has half a dozen foreign lingoes stowed away in his brain.  He pronounces Folly something broadish—­like Fol-lay, I believe; but it means all the same thing.  Folly is folly, pronounce it as you will.”

Nelson continued to pace his cabin, working the stump of his arm, and smiling half-bitterly; half in a sort of irony that inclined him to be in a good-humor with himself.

“Do you remember the ship, Cuffe, we had that sharp brush with off Toulon, in old Agamemnon?” he said, after making a turn or two in silence.  “I mean the dismasted eighty-four that was in tow of the frigate, and which we peppered until their Gallic soup had some taste to it!  Now, do you happen to know her real name in good honest English?”

“I do not, my lord.  I remember, they said she was called the Ca Ira; and I always supposed that it was the name of some old Greek or Roman—­or, perhaps, of one of their new-fangled republican saints.”

“They!—­D—­n ’em, they’ve got no saints to name, my good fellow, since they cashiered all the old ones!  There is something respectable in the names of a Spanish fleet; and one feels that he is flogging gentlemen, at least, while he is at work on them.  No, sir, Ca Ira means neither more nor less than ‘That’ll Do’; and I fancy, Cuffe, they thought of their own name more than once while the old Greek was hanging on their quarter, smashing their cabin windows for them!  A pretty sound it would have been had we got her and put her into our own service—­His Majesty’s ship ‘That’ll Do,’ 84, Captain Cuffe!”

“I certainly should have petitioned my Lords Commissioners to change her name.”

“You would have done quite right.  A man might as well sail in a man-of-war called the ‘Enough.’  Then, there was the three-decker that helped her out of the scrape, the Sans-Culottes, as the French call her; I suppose you know what that means?”