His assiduous applications, however, were not wholly unavailing to obtain him the professional employments usually so hard to get in times of peace.  For five of the ten years, 1783-1793, he commanded frigates, chiefly on the Newfoundland station; and in them, though now turning thirty, he displayed the superabundant vitality and restless activity that had characterized his early youth.  “Whenever there was exertion required aloft,” wrote a midshipman who served with him at this period, “to preserve a sail or a mast, the captain was foremost in the work, apparently as a mere matter of amusement, and there was not a man in the ship that could equal him in personal activity.  He appeared to play among the elements in the hardest storms.  I remember once, in close-reefing the main topsail, the captain had given his orders from the quarter-deck and sent us aloft.  On gaining the topsail yard, the most active and daring of our party hesitated to go upon it, as the sail was flapping violently, making it a service of great danger; but a voice was heard from the extreme end of the yard, calling upon us to exert ourselves to save the sail, which would otherwise beat to pieces.  A man said, ‘Why, that’s the captain!  How the ——­ did he get there?’ He had followed us up, and, clambering over the backs of the sailors, had reached the topmast head, above the yard, and thence descended by the lift,”—­a feat unfortunately not easy to be explained to landsmen, but which will be allowed by seamen to demand great hardihood and address.

All this was the simple overflow of an animal energy not to be repressed, the exulting prowess of a giant delighting to run his course.  It found expression also in joyous practical jests, like those of a big boy, which at times had ludicrous consequences.  On one occasion of state ceremony, the king’s birthday, Pellew had dressed in full uniform to attend a dinner on shore.  The weather was hot, and the crew had been permitted an hour’s swimming around the ship.  While his boat was being manned, the captain stood by the frigate’s rail watching the bathers, and near by him was one of the ship’s boys.  “I too shall have a good swim soon,” called the latter to a comrade in the water.  “The sooner, the better,” said Pellew, coming behind him and tipping him overboard.  No sooner had the lad risen to the surface from his plunge than it was plain that he could not swim; so in after him went the practical joker, with all his toggery.  “If ever the captain was frightened,” writes the officer just quoted, “it was then.”

But along with all this physical exuberance and needless assumption of many of the duties of a foremast hand, Pellew possessed to a very remarkable extent that delicate art of seamanship which consists in so handling a ship as to make her do just what you want, and to put her just where she should be; making her, to use a common sea expression, do everything but talk.  This is a faculty probably inborn, like most others