"But, as I was a-saying only last night to Jim Marksby, the hall-porter, sir," he continued, "court-martials, sir, isn't wot they used to was. Lord-sakes! sir, I remembers, as if it were yesterday, in old Sir Titus Fitzblazes's time, sir, when they was as plentiful as the blackberries on Browndown! "W'y, sir, b'lieve me or not if yer likes, but there wasn't a mornin'-- barring Sundays in course--as yer wouldn't hear that theer blessed gun a-firin' for a court-martial, sir, j'est the same as ye heerd j'est now, sir, yezsir! Ah, them was fine times, they was, for the watermen on Hardway; for they usest to make a rare harvest a-taking off witnesses and prisoners' `friends,' as they calls 'em, and lawyers and noospaper chaps to the flagship, they did. The old chaps called the signal gun `old Fitzblazes's Eight o'clock Gun,' sir. They did so, sir, yezsir!" "Indeed, waiter?" said I, feeling quite proud of his thus speaking to me as if I were a grown-up person. "But who was this gentleman, old Fitz-- what did you call him?" "Old Sir Titus Fitzblazes, sir," glibly replied the coffee-room factotum, flicking off a fly as he spoke from the table-cloth whereon he had just arranged all the paraphernalia of our breakfast. "Lord-sakes, sir, yer doesn't mean for to say, sir, as a well-growed young gen'leman like yerself, sir, as is a naval gent, sir, as I can see with arf an eye, haven't heard tell o' he? Well, sir, he were port admiral here, sir, a matter of eight or ten year ago, sir, yezsir; and, wot's more, sir, he were the tautest old sea porkypine ye'd fetch across `in a blue moon,' as sailor folk say! "Yezsir, I've heerd when he were commodore on the West Coast, he used for to turn up the hands every mornin' regular and give 'em four dozen apiece for breakfast, sir!" "Good gracious me, waiter!" I exclaimed, aghast at this statement. "Four dozen lashes?" "Yezsir. Lor'! four dozen lashings was nothink to old Sir Titus, for he were pertickeler partial to noggin', he were, and took it out of the men like steam, he did! "The ossifers, in course, he couldn't sarve out in the same way, not being allowed for to do so by the laws of the service, sir; but he'd court-martial 'em, sir, as many on 'em as would give him arf a chance, and the court-martial gun used for to fire in his time here as reg'lar as clock-work every mornin' at eight, winter and summer alike, jest the same as when the flag's h'isted at sunrise, yezsir!" "What an old martinet he must have been!" I said in response to this. "Perhaps, though, the poor old admiral suffered from bad health, and that made him cross and easily put out?" "Bad health, sir? Not a bit of it!" exclaimed my friend, the waiter, repudiating such an excuse with scorn. "It were bad temper as were _his_ complaint. "Lord-sakes, though, sir, he were bad all over, was Sir Titus; ay, that he were, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. As bad as they makes 'em!