“Good morning, Stone!” said Nelson.  “You shall have your ship, and if I can make this young gentleman one of my officers it shall be done.  But I gather from his dress,” he continued, running his eye over me, “that you have been more fortunate in prize-money than most of your comrades.  For my own part, I never did nor could turn my thoughts to money-making.”

My father explained that I had been under the charge of the famous Sir Charles Tregellis, who was my uncle, and with whom I was now residing.

“Then you need no help from me,” said Nelson, with some bitterness.  “If you have either guineas or interest you can climb over the heads of old sea-officers, though you may not know the poop from the galley, or a carronade from a long nine.  Nevertheless—­But what the deuce have we here?”

The footman had suddenly precipitated himself into the room, but stood abashed before the fierce glare of the admiral’s eye.

“Your lordship told me to rush to you if it should come,” he explained, holding out a large blue envelope.

“By Heaven, it is my orders!” cried Nelson, snatching it up and fumbling with it in his awkward, one-handed attempt to break the seals.  Lady Hamilton ran to his assistance, but no sooner had she glanced at the paper inclosed than she burst into a shrill scream, and throwing up her hands and her eyes, she sank backwards in a swoon.  I could not but observe, however, that her fall was very carefully executed, and that she was fortunate enough, in spite of her insensibility, to arrange her drapery and attitude into a graceful and classical design.  But he, the honest seaman, so incapable of deceit or affectation that he could not suspect it in others, ran madly to the bell, shouting for the maid, the doctor, and the smelling-salts, with incoherent words of grief, and such passionate terms of emotion that my father thought it more discreet to twitch me by the sleeve as a signal that we should steal from the room.  There we left him then in the dim-lit London drawing-room, beside himself with pity for this shallow and most artificial woman, while without, at the edge of the Piccadilly curb, there stood the high dark berline ready to start him upon that long journey which was to end in his chase of the French fleet over seven thousand miles of ocean, his meeting with it, his victory, which confined Napoleon’s ambition for ever to the land, and his death, coming, as I would it might come to all of us, at the crowning moment of his life.

CHAPTER XIV—­ON THE ROAD