CHAPTER XVII.

SIR SAMUEL HOOD.

As soon as the Volage was refitted, and her crew refreshed, after our voyage from England of four months and a half, we sailed from Bombay to the southward along the western coast of India; and having rounded Ceylon, at Point de Galle, on the extreme south-western corner, where we merely touched to land the governor’s dispatches, before we hauled up to the northward, and, after twelve days’ passage, sailed into the beautiful harbour of Trincomalee.  There, to my great joy, we found the commander-in-chief, Sir Samuel Hood; who, to my still greater joy, informed me that a vacancy had been kept open for me in his flag ship, the Illustrious.  In a few minutes my traps were packed up, my commission made out, and I had the honour of hailing myself a professional follower of one of the first officers in his Majesty’s service.  It is true, I was only fifth lieutenant, and not even fifth on the Admiral’s list for promotion; for I came after a number of old officers who had served under Sir Samuel for many long years of patient, or rather impatient, expectation:  but my first and grand purpose was attained, although my chance of advancement was very small, and very remote.

In capstans, and other machines, there is a mechanical device, with which every person is acquainted, termed a pall or catch, by which the work gained in the effort last made shall be secured, and the machine prevented from turning back again.  Something of this kind takes place in life, particularly in naval life; and happy is the officer who hears the pall of his fortunes play “click! click!” as he spins upwards in his profession.  Proportionately deep is the despair of the poor wretch who, after struggling and tugging with all his might at the weary windlass of his hopes, can never bring it quite far enough round to hear the joyous sound of the pall dropping into its berth!  I well remember most of these important moments of my own life; and I could readily describe the different sensations to which their successive occurrence gave rise, from the startling hour when my father first told me that my own request was now to be granted, for on the very next day I was to go to sea—­up to that instant when the still more important announcement met my ear, “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder!”

“It is easy to be cheerful when one is successful,” says a high authority; and there are “few people who are not good-natured when they have nothing to cross them,” says another equally profound recorder of common-places; but the secret of good fortune seems to lie far less in making the most of favourable incidents, or in submitting manfully to disastrous ones, than in studying how to fill up to advantage the long intervals between these great epochs in our lives.  So that there is, perhaps, no point of duty which affords more scope for the talents of a superior than the useful