was allowed to fall out of the service it was not because he was wanting in zeal or ability. Although Marryat, like every other naval officer who ever held His Majesty’s commission, thought himself “no favourite” with the Admiralty, he had no intelligible reason to complain--at least as yet. The grumblings of naval officers are generally, indeed, unintelligible to the landsman, who is apt, after hearing much of them, to arrive at the conclusion that if every gentleman in the service were promoted to be Lord High Admiral and made G.C.B. to morrow morning, they would all be as discontented as ever by midday. Certainly Marryat, who was a commander at twenty-three, and had received a command, on service which brought him into notice, in time of profound peace and reduction of armaments, when the great majority of his fellow officers were vegetating on half pay on shore, had little cause to growl. He must, in truth, have had very good influence at the Admiralty, for though he was only paid off the _Rosario_ in February, 1822, he was re-appointed to the _Larne_, of twenty guns, in March, 1823, so that he had barely a year on shore. The _Larne_ was fitted out at Portsmouth for service in the East Indies. In July Marryat sailed from Spithead for his station, this time taking out his wife and family. An entry in his log briefly records an accident which might, if the amplified form of the story given in his biography is to be taken as literally true, have ended his career in a somewhat absurd manner. His gig upset in Falmouth Harbour while he was in it. To an athletic man and good swimmer a ducking in the month of July was no great disaster, but the boat carried a bumboat woman and a midshipman. The woman swam like a fish, and was delighted at the prospect of distinction and profit apparently thrown in her way. She fastened on Marryat, intent on saving a captain, and refused peremptorily to let him go when she was asked to transfer her help from the superior officer, who did not need it, to the obscure midshipman, who, not being able to swim, was in imminent danger of drowning. In some way or another Marryat did contrive to get rid of the incumbrance of her assistance, and the mid was not sacrificed. Whether he did not invent the bumboat woman’s devotion to rank, is perhaps doubtful. A bumboat woman was capable of acting in this way, no doubt, but then Marryat was equally capable of seeing that she ought to behave in this way, and of crediting her with fulfilling her duty.