The Admiral, Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver stood in the gangway to receive the officer, a man whose portrait should be painted by the caricaturing brush of a Michael Scott. He was this side of forty, and a great Roman nose stood out like a flying jib between two gaunt cheeks whose hollows when he was silent made you think he was sucking in his breath. He wore a pigtail under a very old, tarnished cocked hat. His uniform coat was scarcely held together by the tailor's thread, and appeared to have travelled a score of times round the world in an age when a voyage round the world was regarded as something more prodigious than we should now consider a voyage to the moon, if such a journey were practicable. His shoes were rusty; his hose had gone into mourning over an absence of soap that was all the same as the death of his laundress. Yet despite a garb that made a travesty of the human figure there was something distinguished and even noble in the man's bearing. It was to be seen at once (and no masterful capacity of penetration was needed) that in this officer was the gentleman of old blood, poor and proud, a loyal subject whose heart's life was at the service of his King and country. It might be thought that the first person in the group this gentleman's eyes fastened upon was Lucy. She would be held to appeal in her sweetness, colour, freshness, and youth to a sailor as a nosegay of lovely flowers to a lover of flowers who for months has lived forlorn in a desert of sand. But instead of looking at Lucy, the lieutenant stared at the Admiral with a very great deal of visible speculation in the screwed-up cock of his eye, till his face relaxed with these words: "Pray, sir, did you ever hear of Billy Lawrence?" "Who commanded His Britannic Majesty's sloop _Merlin_?" cried Sir William. "My dear Fellowes, this is indeed an unexpected meeting. And you knew me before I should have known you!" They grasped hands. "Acton, let me introduce an old shipmate--Lieutenant Fellowes. Captain Acton--Miss Lucy Acton." "Of the Norfolk Fellowes?" enquired Captain Acton, after bows and smiles had been exchanged. "Ay, sir," exclaimed the Admiral; "and as a man of Norfolk myself I am proud of the family whose records do honour to the dear old county." "Pray, what is your ship, sir?" asked Captain Acton. "The _Phoebe_." "Who's her captain?" "Lord Garlies." "Ha!" said Captain Acton. "He was at St Vincent." "As a spectator only, I think, sir," answered Mr Fellowes. "His lordship evidently suspects us," said Captain Acton, laughing. "Why, to be sure," said the lieutenant, laughing also, "you have a very slaving, piratical look. Who would expect to find a British Admiral aboard so rakish a craft?" "But unarmed, Fellowes, unarmed!" exclaimed the Admiral. "You won't want to see our papers, will ye?" And the worthy old sailor chuckled heartily from his throat to the bottom of his waistcoat.