rect answer in words. By this time Sir
Wycherly and the others had approached, and the customary introductions
took place. Sir Wycherly now pressed his new acquaintance to join his
guests, with so much heartiness, that there was no such thing as
refusing.

"Since you and Sir Gervaise both insist on it so earnestly, Sir
Wycherly," returned the rear-admiral, "I must consent; but as it is
contrary to our practice, when on foreign service--and I call this
roadstead a foreign station, as to any thing we know about it--as it is
contrary to our practice for both flag-officers to sleep out of the
fleet, I shall claim the privilege to be allowed to go off to my ship
before midnight. I think the weather looks settled, Sir Gervaise, and we
may trust that many hours, without apprehension."

"Pooh--pooh--Bluewater, you are always fancying the ships in a gale, and
clawing off a lee-shore. Put your heart at rest, and let us go and take
a comfortable dinner with Sir Wycherly, who has a London paper, I dare
to say, that may let us into some of the secrets of state. Are there any
tidings from our people in Flanders?"

"Things remain pretty much as they have been," returned Sir Wycherly,
"since that last terrible affair, in which the Duke got the better of
the French at--I never can remember an outlandish name; but it sounds
something like a Christian baptism. If my poor brother, St. James, were
living, now, he could tell us all about it."

"Christian baptism! That's an odd allusion for a field of battle. The
armies can't have got to Jerusalem; hey! Atwood?"

"I rather think, Sir Gervaise," the secretary coolly remarked, "that Sir
Wycherly Wychecombe refers to the battle that took place last spring--it
was fought at Font-something; and a font certainly has something to do
with Christian baptism."

"That's it--that's it," cried Sir Wycherly, with some eagerness;
"Fontenoi was the name of the place, where the Duke would have carried
all before him, and brought Marshal Saxe, and all his frog-eaters
prisoners to England, had our Dutch and German allies behaved better
than they did. So it is with poor old England, gentlemen; whatever _she_
gains, her allies always _lose_ for her--the Germans, or the colonists,
are constantly getting us into trouble!"

Both Sir Gervaise and his friend were practical men, and well knew that
they never fought the Dutch or the French, without meeting with
something that was pretty nearly their match. They