The next day, in spite of the sail she carried, the _Sea-horse_ lagged behind, and one of the frigates sailed back to her, and the captain shouted angry orders to the master to keep his place in the convoy. "If we get any wind," O'Grady said, as the frigate bore up on her course again, "it will take all your time to keep up with her, my fine fellow. You see," he explained to Terence, "no vessel is perfect in all points; some like a good deal of wind, some are best in a calm. Now this ship wants wind." "I think she does, Captain O'Grady," Terence replied, gravely. "At any rate her strong point is not sailing in a light wind." "No," O'Grady admitted, regretfully; "but it is not the ship's fault. I have no doubt at all that her bottom is foul, and that she has a lot of barnacles and weeds twice as long as your body. That is the reason why she is a little sluggish." "That may be it," Terence agreed; "but I should have thought that they would have seen to that before they sent her to Cork." "It is like enough that her owners are well-wishers of Napoleon, Terence, and that it is out of spite that they have done it. There is no doubt that she is a wonderful craft." "I am quite inclined to agree with you, Captain O'Grady, for as I have never seen a ship except when the regiment came back from India ten years ago, I am no judge of one." "It is the eye, Terence. I can't say that I have been much at sea myself, except on that voyage out and home; but I have an eye for ships, and can see their good points at a glance. You can take it from me that she is a wonderful vessel." "She would look all the better if her sails were a bit cleaner, and not so patched," Terence said, looking up. "She might look better to the eye, lad, but no doubt the owners know what they are doing, and consider that she goes better with sails that fit her than she would with new ones." Terence burst into a roar of laughter. O'Grady, as usual, looked at him in mild surprise. "What are you laughing at, you young spalpeen?" "I am thinking, Captain O'Grady," the lad said, recovering himself, "that it is a great pity you could not have obtained the situation of Devil's Advocate. I have read that years ago someone was appointed to defend Old Nick when the others were pitching into him, and to show that he was not as black as he was painted, but was a respectable gentleman who had been maligned by the world." "No doubt there is a good deal to be said for him," O'Grady said, seriously. "Give a dog a bad name, you know, and you may hang him; and I have no doubt the Old One has been held responsible for lots of things he never had as much as the tip of his finger in at all, at all." Seeing that his captain was about to pursue the matter much further, Terence, making the excuse that it was time he went down to see if the men's breakfast was all right, slipped off, and he and Dick Ryan had a hearty laugh over O'Grady's peculiarities.