ery possible device, and all
her appointments were shapely and in order. She was clearly a British
man-of-war, as shown in her trim-dressed sailors, her good handful
of marines; but her second and third lieutenants seemed little like
Englishmen. There was gun-drill and cutlass-drill every day, and, what
was also singular, there was boat-drill twice a day, so that the crew
of this man-of-war, as they saw Golden Gate ahead of them, were perhaps
more expert at boat-drill than any that sailed. They could lower and
raise a boat with a wonderful expertness in a bad sea, and they rowed
with clock-like precision and machine-like force.

Their general discipline did credit to the British Navy. But they were
not given to understand that by their Commander, Captain Shewell, who
had an eye like a spot of steel and a tongue like aloes or honey as the
mood was on him. It was clear that he took his position seriously, for
he was as rigid and exact in etiquette as an admiral of the old school,
and his eye was as keen for his officers as for his men; and that might
have seemed strange too, if one had seen him two years before commanding
a schooner with a roving commission in the South Seas. Then he was more
genial of eye and less professional of face. Here he could never be
mistaken for anything else than the commander of a man-of-war--it was in
his legs, in the shoulder he set to the wind, in the tone of his orders,
in his austere urbanity to his officers. Yet there was something else
in his eye, in his face, which all this professionalism could not hide,
even when he was most professional--some elusive, subterranean force or
purpose.

This was most noticeable when he was shut away from the others in his
cabin. Then his whole body seemed to change. The eye became softer, and
yet full of a sort of genial devilry, the body had a careless alertness
and elasticity, the whole man had the athletic grace of a wild animal,
and his face had a hearty sort of humour, which the slightly-lifting
lip, in its insolent disdain, could not greatly modify. He certainly
seemed well pleased with himself, and more than once, as he sat alone,
he laughed outright, and once he said aloud, as his fingers ran up and
down a schedule--not a man-o'-war's schedule--laughing softly:

"Poor old Farquhar, if he could see me now!" Then, to himself: "Well, as
I told him, I was violently tossed like a ball into the large country;
and I've had a lot of adventure and spor