The sea has always made a splendid romantic setting for a gallant hero.  Even one of moderate attainments and inconsiderable adventures may loom to proportions that are quite picturesque when given a background of tossing waves, “all sails set,” and a few jolly tars to sing and fight and heave the rope.  And when you have a hero who needs no augmenting of heroism, no spectacular embellishment as it were,—­what a gorgeous figure he becomes, to be sure!

Peter Warren, fighting Irish lad, venturesome sailor, sometime Admiral and Member of Parliament, and at all times a merry and courageous soldier of the high seas, falls heir to as pretty and stirring a reputation as ever set a gilded aureole about the head of a man.  Though he was in the British navy and a staunch believer in “Imperial England,” he was so closely associated with New York for so many years that no book about the city could be written without doing him some measure of honour.  No figure is so fit as Sir.  Peter’s to represent those picturesque Colonial days when the “Sons of Liberty” had not begun to assemble, and this New York of ours was well-nigh as English as London town itself.  So, resplendent in his gold-laced uniform and the smartly imposing hat of his rank and office, let him enter and make his bow,—­Admiral Sir.  Peter Warren, by your leave, Knight of the Bath, Member of Parliament, destined to lie at last in the stately gloom of the Abbey, with the rest of the illustrious English dead.

He came of a long line of Irishmen, and certainly did that fine fighting race the utmost credit.  From his boyhood he was always hunting trouble; he dearly loved a fight, and gravitated into the British navy as inevitably as a duck to water.  He was scarcely more than an urchin when he became a fighting sailor, and indeed one could expect no less, for both his father and grandfather had been officers in the service, and goodness knows how many lusty Warrens before them!  For our friend Peter was a Warren of Warrenstown, of the County Meath just west of Dublin, and let me tell you that meant something!

The Warrens got their estates in the days of “Strongbow,” and held them through all the vicissitudes of olden Ireland.  They were a house called “English-Irish,” and “inside the pale,” which means that they stood high in British favour, and contributed heroes to the army or navy from each of their hardy generations.  They had no title, but to be The Warren of Warrenstown, Meath, was to be entitled to look down with disdain upon upstart baronets and newly created peers.  Sir.  Christopher Aylmer’s daughter, Catherine, was honoured to marry Captain Michael Warren, and her brother, Admiral Lord Aylmer, only too glad to take charge of her boy Peter later on.