the English.  He had been struck in the belly by grape-shot, lost consciousness, and laid out with the rest of the dead, of whom a list was being made before throwing them overboard one after the other, when the battle was over They were actually swinging him backwards and forwards to heave him over the side, when one of his comrades called out, “Hold on.  Let Danican alone.  We’ll give him a funeral”—­to which ceremony the old Breton owed his life, though it did not soften the by no means placid character of the strict old disciplinarian.

And accordingly, something in his eye, when the admiral came skipping in smilingly, with a commonplace “Good-day, Danican” “Good-day gentlemen,” warned me we were going to have a scene.  “Admiral,” he shouted in a voice of thunder, “I have the honour to present the staff of the ship Jupiter to you—­and I take this opportunity, Admiral, of telling you that it would be impossible to be more dissatisfied with these gentlemen than I am!” This tirade concluded by a violent wave of his cocked hat, while the officers stood motionless and stared at the deck.  A thunderbolt falling out of heaven would not have startled the admiral more than this speech.  I never saw any man so put out of countenance.  He shuffled his feet, gave a forced laugh, and not finding anything to say, stammered some disconnected words, “I trust . . . my dear. . .  Danican .... a regard for duty . . . these gentlemen ....!” We put a stop to the distressing scene by low bows of dismissal, and everybody went off in a rage—­the officers with their captain, the captain with the admiral for not supporting discipline, and the admiral with everybody, including, it may be, his own self.

Nobody was satisfied, which is indeed the invariable consequence of weakness, for the love of vulgar popularity was the weakness of our eminent chief, so deeply respected on other accounts.  This same weakness caused him to end his days as a Deputy of the most colourless opinions.

I cruised for six months outside the Dardanelles, first with the Iena and afterwards with the Belle-Poule, which had joined the squadron and of which I had been given command—­six months which offered nothing in the way of wild gaiety, beyond the routine of my duty.  True, we saw the sun rise over Mount Ida every morning, but we never saw the shadow of a goddess.  The utmost we did in the short breathing spaces between our drills and cruises between Cape Baba and the Isles of Tenedos, Lemnos and Imbro, was to land at the slaughter-house of the contractor to the squadron, irreverently styled Charognopolis, for an excursion to the ruins of Troy, to shoot snipe in the marshes of Simois, or get a hare on the tomb of Patroclus.

This monotony was broken, however, by the appearance of the Turkish fleet, which we saw issuing, forty strong, from the Dardanelles, sailing along in confusion, driving before a strong breeze—­altogether a most stately sight.