suspect who were to be the masters at sea,
whatever they might have thought of their own powers on shore, when a
fine new corvette of eighteen guns, the _Gannet_, was standing across
the British Channel on a cruise. Her master and commander was Captain
Brine, long first lieutenant of the _Ruby_. Her first lieutenant was a
very gallant officer, Mr Digby; and her second was Sir Henry Elmore,
who was glad to go to sea again with his old friend Captain Brine. She
had a boatswain, who had not long received his warrant for that rank,
Paul Pringle by name; her gunner was Peter Ogle, and her carpenter Abel
Bush; while one of her youngest though most active A.B.s was Billy True
Blue Freeborn. She had a black cook too. He was not a very good one;
but he played the fiddle, and that was considered to make amends for his
want of skill.

"For why," he used to remark, "if my duff hard, I fiddle much; you dance
de more, and den de duff go down--what more you want?"

True Blue's three godfathers had resolved to become warrant-officers if
they could, and all had studied hard to pass their examinations, which
they did in a very satisfactory way.

Their example was not lost upon True Blue. "I have never been sorry
that I am not on the quarterdeck," said he one day to Paul. "But,
godfather, I shall be if I cannot become a boatswain. That's what I am
fitted for, and that's what my father would have wished me to be, I'm
sure."

"That he would, Billy," answered Paul. "You see a boatswain's an
officer and wears a uniform; and he's a seaman, too, so to speak, and
that's what your father wished you to be; and I'll tell you what,
godson, if some of these days, when you're old enough, you becomes a
boatswain, and when the war's over you goes on shore and marries Mary
Ogle, so that you'll have a home of your own when I am under hatches,
that's all I wishes for you. It's the happiest lot for any man--a good
wife, a snug little cottage, a garden to dig in, with a summer-house to
smoke your pipe in, and maybe a berth in the dockyard, just to keep you
employed and your legs going, is all a man like you or me can want for,
and that is what I hope you may get."

Some young men would have turned the matter off with a laugh, but True
Blue replied, "Ay, godfather, there isn't such a girl between the North
Foreland and the Land's End so good and so pretty to my mind as Mary
Ogle; and that I'll maintain, let others say what they will."

"True