“I trust, my lord, that I shall be with you when next we meet them,” said my father.

“Meet them we shall and must.  By Heaven, I shall never rest until I have given them a shaking.  The scoundrel Buonaparte wishes to humble us.  Let him try, and God help the better cause!”

He spoke with such extraordinary animation that the empty sleeve flapped about in the air, giving him the strangest appearance.  Seeing my eyes fixed upon it, he turned with a smile to my father.

“I can still work my fin, Stone,” said he, putting his hand across to the stump of his arm.  “What used they to say in the fleet about it?”

“That it was a sign, sir, that it was a bad hour to cross your hawse.”

“They knew me, the rascals.  You can see, young gentleman, that not a scrap of the ardour with which I serve my country has been shot away.  Some day you may find that you are flying your own flag, and when that time comes you may remember that my advice to an officer is that he should have nothing to do with tame, slow measures.  Lay all your stake, and if you lose through no fault of your own, the country will find you another stake as large.  Never mind manoeuvres!  Go for them!  The only manoeuvre you need is that which will place you alongside your enemy.  Always fight, and you will always be right.  Give not a thought to your own ease or your own life, for from the day that you draw the blue coat over your back you have no life of your own.  It is the country’s, to be most freely spent if the smallest gain can come from it.  How is the wind this morning, Stone?”

“East-south-east,” my father answered, readily.

“Then Cornwallis is, doubtless, keeping well up to Brest, though, for my own part, I had rather tempt them out into the open sea.”

“That is what every officer and man in the fleet would prefer, your lordship,” said my father.

“They do not love the blockading service, and it is little wonder, since neither money nor honour is to be gained at it.  You can remember how it was in the winter months before Toulon, Stone, when we had neither firing, wine, beef, pork, nor flour aboard the ships, nor a spare piece of rope, canvas, or twine.  We braced the old hulks with our spare cables, and God knows there was never a Levanter that I did not expect it to send us to the bottom.  But we held our grip all the same.  Yet I fear that we do not get much credit for it here in England, Stone, where they light the windows for a great battle, but they do not understand that it is easier for us to fight the Nile six times over, than to keep our station all winter in the blockade.  But I pray God that we may meet this new fleet of theirs and settle the matter by a pell-mell battle.”

“May I be with you, my lord!” said my father, earnestly.  “But we have already taken too much of your time, and so I beg to thank you for your kindness and to wish you good morning.”