a man of extreme severity and great roughness of manner.
Still he must have been a man of family, as his title of _Bailli_ de
Suffren, was derived from his being a Knight of Malta. It is a singular
circumstance connected with the death of this distinguished officer,
which occurred not long before the French revolution, that he
disappeared in an extraordinary manner, and is buried no one knows
where. It is supposed that he was killed by one of his own officers, in
a rencontre in the streets of Paris, at night, and that the influence of
the friends of the victor was sufficiently great to suppress inquiry.
The cause of the quarrel is attributed to harsh treatment on service.]

On the present occasion, the vice-admiral did not pull through the
fleet, without discovering the peculiar propensity to which we have
alluded. In passing one of the ships, he made a sign to his coxswain to
cause the boat's crew to lay on their oars, when he hailed the vessel,
and the following dialogue occurred.

"Carnatic, ahoy!" cried the admiral.

"Sir," exclaimed the officer of the deck, jumping on a quarter-deck gun,
and raising his hat.

"Is Captain Parker on board, sir?"

"He is, Sir Gervaise; will you see him, sir?"

A nod of the head sufficed to bring the said Captain Parker on deck, and
to the gangway, where he could converse with his superior, without
inconvenience to either.

"How do you do, _Captain_ Parker?"--a certain sign Sir Gervaise meant to
rap the other over the knuckles, else would it have been _Parker_."--How
do you do, _Captain_ Parker? I am sorry to see you have got your ship
too much down by the head, sir. She'll steer off the wind, like a colt
when he first feels the bridle; now with his head on one side, and now
on the other. You know I like a compact line, and straight wakes, sir."

"I am well aware of that, Sir Gervaise," returned Parker, a gray-headed,
meek old man, who had fought his way up from the forecastle to his
present honourable station, and, who, though brave as a lion before the
enemy, had a particular dread of all his commanders; "but we have been
obliged to use more water aft than we could wish, on account of the
tiers. We shall coil away the cables anew, and come at some of the
leaguers forward, and bring all right again, in a week, I hope, sir."

"A week?--the d----l, sir; that will never do, when I expect to see de
Vervillin _to-morrow_. Fill all your empty casks aft with salt-water,
immediately