"The captain stood on the carronade: 'First Lieutenant,' says he, 'Send all my merry men after here, for they must list to me. I haven't the gift of the gab, my sons, because I'm bred to the sea. That ship there is a Frenchman, who means to fight with we. And odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds--but I've gained the victory! * * * * * * * * That ship there is a Frenchman, and if we don't take she, 'Tis a thousand bullets to one, that she will capture we. I haven't the gift of the gab, my boys; so each man to his gun; If she's not mine in half-an-hour, I'll flog each mother's son. For odds, bobs, hammer and tongs, long as I've been to sea, I've fought 'gainst every odds--and I've gained the victory!'" --MARRYAT. British naval history is rich in the records of what may be called great sea-duels--combats, that is, of single ship against single ship, waged often with extraordinary fierceness and daring. They resemble the combat of knight against knight, with flash of cannon instead of thrust of lance, and the floor of the lonely sea for the trampled lists. He must have a very slow-beating imagination who cannot realise the picturesqueness of these ancient sea-duels. Two frigates cruising for prey catch the far-off gleam of each other's topsails over the rim of the horizon. They approach each other warily, two high-sniffing sea-mastiffs. A glimpse of fluttering colour--the red flag and the _drapeau blanc_, or the Union Jack and the tricolour--reveals to each ship its foe. The men stand grimly at quarters; the captain, with perhaps a solitary lieutenant, and a middy as aide-de-camp, is on his quarter-deck. There is the manoeuvring for the weather-gage, the thunder of the sudden broadside, the hurtle and crash of the shot, the stern, quick word of command as the clumsy guns are run in to be reloaded and fired again and again with furious haste. The ships drift into closer wrestle. Masts and yards come tumbling on to the blood-splashed decks. There is the grinding shock of the great wooden hulls as they meet, the wild leap of the boarders, the clash of cutlass on cutlass, the shout of victory, the sight of the fluttering flag as it sinks reluctantly from the mizzen of the beaten ship. Then the smoke drifts away, and on the tossing sea-floor lie, little better than dismantled wrecks, victor and vanquished. No great issue, perhaps, ever hung upon these lonely sea-combats; but as object-lessons in the qualities by which the empire has been won, and by which it must be maintained, these ancient sea-fights have real and permanent value. What better examples of cool hardihood, of chivalrous loyalty to the flag, of self-reliant energy, need be imagined or desired? The generation that carries the heavy burden of the empire to-day cannot afford to forget the tale of such exploits.