de of the Plantagenet, whither etiquette had brought them
together, in a little crowd, when her three top-sails fell, and their
sheets steadily drew the clews towards the ends of the lower yards. Even
while this was in process, the yards began to ascend, and rose with that
steady but graduated movement which marks the operation in a man-of-war.
All three were fairly mast-headed in two minutes. As the wind struck the
canvass obliquely, the sails filled as they opened their folds, and, by
the time their surfaces were flattened by distension, the Plantagenet
steadily moved from her late berth, advancing slowly against a strong
tide, out of the group of ships, among which she had been anchored. This
was a beautiful evolution, resembling that of a sea-fowl, which lazily
rises on its element, spreads its wings, emerges from the water, and
glides away to some distant and unseen point.

The movement of the flag-ship was stately, measured, and grand. For five
minutes she held her way nearly due east, with the wind on her starboard
quarter, meeting the tide in a direct line; until, having drawn
sufficiently ahead of the fleet, she let fall her courses, sheeted home
top-gallant-sails and royals, set her spanker, jibs, and stay-sails, and
braced up sharp on a wind, with her head at south-southeast. This
brought the tide well under her lee fore-chains, and set her rapidly off
the land, and to windward. As she trimmed her sails, and steadied her
bowlines, she fired a gun, made the numbers of the vessels in the offing
to weigh, and to pass within hail. All this did Bluewater note, with the
attention of an _amateur_, as well as with the critical analysis of a
_connoisseur_.

"Very handsomely done, Master Geoffrey--very handsomely done, it must be
allowed! never did a bird quit a flock with less fuss, or more
beautifully, than the Plantagenet has drawn out of the fleet. It must be
admitted that Greenly knows how to handle his ship."

"I fancy Captain Stowel would have done quite as well with the Caesar,
sir," answered the boy, with a proper esprit-de-_ship_. "Don't you
remember, Admiral Bluewater, the time when we got under way off
l'Orient, with the wind blowing a gale directly on shore? Even Sir
Gervaise said, afterwards, that we lost less ground than any ship in the
fleet, and yet the Plantagenet is the most weatherly two-decker in the
navy; as every body says."

"Every body!--She is certainly a weatherly vessel, but not more so t