He came home in a transport, in which Major Foy was also a passenger.  An enemy’s cruiser chased them, and the Major, as the superior officer, was proceeding to assume the command; but Mr. Pellew told him that he was the only naval officer on board, and must himself fight the ship.  The Major acquiesced; and under Mr. Pellew’s command, the transport engaged, and beat off the privateer.

It is scarcely necessary to state that immediately on his arrival he received the promotion which his services had so well deserved.

CHAPTER II.

HIS SERVICES FROM 1778 TO 1791.

There are circumstances which in a few weeks or months may give the experience of years; and when these occur in early life, they make a permanent impression on the character.  In the honours and misfortunes of the late campaign, its toils, and its anxieties, Mr. Pellew had very largely shared; and if rashness would have been the natural fault of a mind like his, a more effectual corrective could not have been desired.  The quick conception, and the forethought, which enabled him in after life so well to combine caution with daring, must have greatly depended upon natural character, but he certainly owed much of it to the severe discipline of his early service.

He had now completed his twenty-first year.  Tall, and with a frame of strength and symmetry, nerved by the hardships of two severe campaigns, his personal activity and power were almost unrivalled.  The spot was shown for many years at Truro, where he sprang over the high gate of an inn-yard at the back of one of the hotels, when, hastening across the court to assist on the sudden alarm of a fire, he found the gate fast.  The consciousness of superior strength, while it made him slow to offend, enabled him to inflict suitable punishment on offenders, and some incidents of a ludicrous character are still remembered.

The water was as a natural element to him, and he often amused himself in a manner which, to one less expert, would have been attended with the utmost danger.  He would sometimes go out in a boat, and overset her by carrying a press of sail.  Acts of daring like these must find their excuse in the spirit of a fearless youth.  But he often found the advantage of that power and self-possession in the water which he derived from his early habits, in saving men who had fallen overboard, and especially in the happiest of all his services, his conduct at the Dutton.  More than once, however, he nearly perished.  In Portsmouth harbour, where he had upset himself in a boat, he was saved with difficulty, after remaining for a considerable time in the water.  On another occasion, he was going by himself from Falmouth to Plymouth in a small punt, fourteen feet long, when his hat was blown overboard, and he immediately threw off his clothes and swam after it, having first secured the tiller a-lee.  As he was returning with his hat, the boat got way on her, and sailed some distance before she came up in the wind.  He had almost reached her when she filled again, and he was thus baffled three or four times.  At length, by a desperate effort, he caught the rudder, but he was so much exhausted that it was a considerable time before he had strength to get into the boat.