“Why, sir, what between his Majesty’s enemies, the care of my ship, and the company of my officers, I find few heavy moments.” “Ah! your officers: True, you _must_ have officers on board; though, I suppose, they are a little oldish to be agreeable to _you_. Will you favour me with a sight of the list?” The Commander of the ‘Dart’ did as he was requested, putting the quarter-bill of his ship into the hands of his unknown enemy, with an eye that was far too honest to condescend to bestow even a look on a being so much despised. “What a list of thorough mouthers! All Yarmouth, and Plymouth, and Portsmouth, and Exmouth names, I do affirm. Here are Smiths enough to do the iron-work of the whole ship. Ha! here is a fellow that might do good service in a deluge. Who may be this Henry Ark, that I find rated as your first lieutenant?” “A youth who wants but a few drops of your blood, Captain Howard, to be one day at the head of his Majesty’s fleet.” “If he be then so extraordinary for his merit, Captain Bignall, may I presume on your politeness to ask him to favour us with his society. I always give my lieutenant half an hour of a morning—if he be genteel.” “Poor boy! God knows where he is to be found at this moment. The noble fellow has embarked, of his own accord, on a most dangerous service, and I am as ignorant as yourself of his success. Remonstrance and even entreaties, were of no avail. The Admiral had great need of a suitable agent, and the good of the nation demanded the risk; then, you know, men of humble birth must earn their preferment in cruising elsewhere than at St. James’s; for the brave lad is indebted to a wreck, in which he was found an infant, for the very name you find so singular.” “He is, however, still borne upon your books as first lieutenant?” “And I hope ever will be, until he shall get the ship he so well merits.—Good Heaven! are you ill Captain Howard? Boy, a tumbler of grog here.” “I thank you, sir,” returned the Rover, smiling calmly, and rejecting the offered beverage, as the blood returned into his features, with a violence that threatened to break through the ordinary boundaries of its currents. “It is no more than an ailing I inherit from my mother. We call it, in our family, the ‘de Vere ivory;’ for no other reason, that I could ever learn, than that one of my female ancestors was particularly startled, in a delicate situation, you know, by an elephant’s tooth. I am told it has rather an amiable look, while it lasts.” “It has the look of a man who is fitter for his mother’s nursery than a gale of wind. But I am glad it is so soon over.” “No one wears the same face long now-a-days, Bignall.—And so this Mr Ark is not any body, after all. “I know not what you call ‘any body,’ sir; but, if sterling courage, great professional merit, and stern loyalty, count for any thing on your late cruising grounds, Captain Howard, Henry Ark will soon be in command of a frigate.”