The Project Gutenberg EBook of Command, by William McFee

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Title: Command

Author: William McFee

Release Date: April 24, 2010 [EBook #32114]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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COMMAND

BY WILLIAM McFEE

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1922

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

_First Edition_

This book is inscribed to those commanders under whom the author has had
the honour to serve, who have achieved firmness without asperity, tact
and sympathy without interference, and appreciation without fuss. It is
inscribed to these gentlemen because while they lack the gift of
self-advertisement, they have contrived, in spite of the trials and
exasperations of a seafaring existence, to engage the respect and
affections of their lieutenants.

PREFATORY NOTE

This tale is an original invention. It is not founded upon fact, nor are
the characters herein described portraits of actual persons. The
incidents and topography are imaginary.

W. M.

COMMAND

CHAPTER I

She was one of those girls who have become much more common of late
years among the upper-middle classes, the comfortably fixed classes,
than they have ever been since the aristocracy left off marrying Italian
_prime-donne_. You know the type of English beauty, so often insisted
on, say, twenty years ago--placid, fair, gentle, blue-eyed, fining into
distinction in Lady Clara Vere de Vere? Always she was the heroine, and
her protagonist, the adventuress, was dark and wicked. For some occult
reason the Lady Rowena type was the fashion.

Ada Rivers was one of those girls who have come up since. The
upper-middle classes had experienced many incursions. A