Gladstone delivered his speech in the English language. As I am writing, it is the fiftieth anniversary of the marriage of the late King Edward with Queen Alexandra, who is still spared to us. I remember that on the 10th March, 1863, the _Marlborough_ was illuminated with a dainty splendour I have never seen surpassed, even in these days of electricity. Every port-hole was framed in sixteen little Maltese glass lamps; the rails and yards were set with them; so that, ports being triced up, and the ship being lit within, she was as though wrought in a glow of mellow fire. Early in the year 1863 I was ordered home, to my great grief. I was discharged to the _Hibernia_ stationed in Malta {34} Harbour, to await the homeward bound P. and O. mail steamer. Many years afterwards, when commanding the _Undaunted_, I was tried by court-martial in the old _Hibernia_ for running my ship ashore and was acquitted of all blame. While waiting in the _Hibernia_ for a passage, I learned that the _Marlborough_ had gone to the rescue of a Turkish liner, carrying troops, which had run aground on the Filfola rocks, twelve or fifteen miles by sea from Malta Harbour. I was so eager to see my old ship again, that I hired a duck-punt and pulled all by myself to the Filfola rocks. Fortunately the sea was calm, or I must have been drowned. I found a party from the _Marlborough_ rolling the Turkish vessel to get her off. Each British sailor took a Turkish sailor by the scruff of his neck, and ran with him from side to side of the ship, until she rolled herself into deep water. I had a delightful dinner on board the _Marlborough_ and then I pulled all the way back in the dark to the _Hibernia_. I was sad indeed that my time in the _Marlborough_ was ended; for, in the words of George Lewis, my old topmate, "the dear old _Marlborough_ was the smartest and happiest ship that ever floated." I took passage home in the mail steamer, and was appointed midshipman to the _Defence_ by Rear-Admiral Charles Eden, C.B., my "sea-daddy." He very kindly said he wished me to gain experience of one of the new iron ships. NOTE _The Old Navy_.--The _Marlborough_ was a survival of the Old Navy, in whose traditions Lord Charles Beresford and his contemporaries were nurtured. It was a hard-fisted, free-living, implacable, tragic, jovial, splendid Service; it was England at her valorous best.