ation would be off yonder to
windward, half a league ahead of us; but it's no easy matter to get into
that position, Sir Gervaise, when the Plantagenet is really in earnest."

Sir Gervaise laughed, and rubbed his hands, then he turned to look for
the Active, the only other vessel of his division. This little cutter
was dancing over the seas, half the time under water, notwithstanding,
under the head of her main-sail, broad off, on the admiral's
weather-beam; finding no difficulty in maintaining her station there, in
the absence of all top-hamper, and favoured by the lowness of her hull.
After this he glanced upward at the sails and spars of the Plantagenet,
which he studied closely.

"No signs of _de Vervillin_, hey! Greenly?" the admiral asked, when his
survey of the whole fleet had ended. "I was in hopes we might see
something of _him_, when the light returned this morning."

"Perhaps it is quite as well as it is, Sir Gervaise," returned the
captain. "We could do little besides look at each other, in this gale,
and Admiral Bluewater ought to join before I should like even to do
_that_."

"Think you so, Master Greenly!--There you are mistaken, then; for I'd
lie by him, were I alone in this ship, that I might know where he was to
be found as soon as the weather would permit us to have something to say
to him."

These words were scarcely uttered, when the look-out in the forward
cross-trees, shouted at the top of his voice, "sail-ho!" At the next
instant the Chloe fired a gun, the report of which was just heard amid
the roaring of the gale, though the smoke was distinctly seen floating
above the mists of the ocean; she also set a signal at her naked
mizzen-top-gallant-mast-head.

"Run below, young gentleman," said the vice-admiral, advancing to the
break of the poop and speaking to a midshipman on the quarter-deck; "and
desire Mr. Bunting to make his appearance. The Chloe signals us--tell
him not to look for his knee-buckles."

A century since, the last injunction, though still so much in use on
ship-board, was far more literal than it is to-day, nearly all classes
of men possessing the articles in question, though not invariably
wearing them when at sea. The midshipman dove below, however, as soon as
the words were out of his superior's mouth; and, in a very few minutes,
Bunting appeared, having actually stopped on the main-deck ladder to
assume his coat, lest he might too unceremoniously invade the sacred
prec