the day when his resignation was so promptly accepted by
the Admiralty. He walked up to the Admiral--Farquhar it was, on the
Bolingbroke--and said: 'Admiral, if I'd been in your place I'd have
done the same. I ought to resign, and I have. Yet if I had to do it over
again, I'd be the same. I don't repent. I'm out of the Navy now, and it
doesn't make any difference what I say, so I'll have my preachment out.
If I were Admiral Farquhar, and you were Edward Debney, ex-commander,
I'd say: "Debney, you're a damned good fellow and a damned bad
officer."'

"The Admiral liked Edward, in spite of all, better than any man in the
Squadron, for Ted's brains were worth those of any half-dozen officers
he had. He simply choked, and then, before the whole ship, dropped both
hands on his shoulders, and said: 'Debney, you're a damned good fellow
and a damned bad officer, and I wish to God you were a damned bad fellow
and a damned good officer--for then there were no need to part.' At that
they parted. But as Edward was leaving, the Admiral came forward again,
and said: 'Where are you going, Debney?' 'I'm going nowhere, sir,' Ted
answered. 'I'm being tossed into strange waters--a lone corvette of no
squadron.' He stopped, smiled, and then said--it was so like him, for,
with all his wildness, he had the tastes of a student: 'You remember
that passage in Isaiah, sir, "And God shall turn upon them violently,
and toss them like a ball into a large country"?'

"There wasn't a man but had a kind thought for him as he left, and
there was rain in the eyes of more than one A.B. Well, from that day he
disappeared, and no one has seen him since. God knows where he is; but
I was thinking, as I looked out there to the setting sun, that his wild
spirit would naturally turn to the South, for civilised places had no
charm for him."

"I never knew quite why he had to leave the Navy."

"He opened fire on a French frigate off Tahiti which was boring holes in
an opium smuggler."

Mostyn laughed. "Of course; and how like Ted it was--an instinct to side
with the weakest."

"Yes, coupled with the fact that the Frenchman's act was mere brutality,
and had not sufficient motive or justification. So Ted pitched into
him."

"Did the smuggler fly the British flag?"

"No, the American; and it was only the intervention of the United States
which prevented serious international trouble. Out of the affair came
Ted a shipwreck."

"Have you never got on his tr