the larboard bow stove in--and how much do I get, though so much older?"

"Well, if you won't help me, Stubbard," said the Admiral, who knew
how long his friend would carry on upon that tack, "I must even get
Scudamore to read it, though it seems to have been written on purpose to
elude him. Blyth, my dear boy, can you explain it?"

"It was--it was only something, sir"--the lieutenant blushed, and
hesitated, and looked away unmanfully--"which I asked Captain Honyman
to leave out, because--because it had nothing to do with it. I mean,
because it was of no importance, even if he happened to have that
opinion. His hand was tied up so, that I did not like to say too much,
and I thought that he would go to sleep, because the doctor had made him
drink a poppy head boiled down with pigtail. But it seems as if he had
got up after that--for he always will have his own way--while I was gone
to put this coat on; and perhaps he wrote that with his left hand, sir.
But it is no part of the business."

"Then we will leave it," said Admiral Darling, "for younger eyes than
mine to read. Nelson wrote better with his left hand than ever he did
with his right, to my thinking, the very first time that he tried it.
But we can't expect everybody to do that. There is no sign of any change
of weather, is there, Stubbard? My orders will depend very much upon
that. I must go home and look at the quicksilver before I know what is
best to do. You had better come with me, Scudamore."

Admiral Darling was quite right in this. Everything depended upon the
weather; and although the rough autumn was not come yet, the prime of
the hopeful year was past. The summer had not been a grand one, such
as we get about once in a decade, but of loose and uncertain character,
such as an Englishman has to make the best of. It might be taking up for
a golden autumn, ripening corn, and fruit, and tree, or it might break
up into shower and tempest, sodden earth, and weltering sky.

"Your captain refers to me for orders," said Admiral Darling to
Scudamore, while they were hastening to the Hall, "as Commander of the
Coast Defence, because he has been brought too far inshore, and one of
the Frenchmen is stranded. The frigate you boarded and carried is the
Ville d'Anvers, of forty guns. The corvette that took the ground, so
luckily for you, when half of your hands were aboard the prize, is the
Blonde, teak-built, and only launched last year. We must try to have
her, w