atron. Happily, however, his reputation was
known to the head of the Admiralty, who not only promoted him for this
action, but also gave him a ship, though a poor one. After a succession
of small commands, he was fortunate enough again to distinguish
himself,--driving ashore and destroying several French privateers, under
circumstances of such danger and difficulty as to win him his next
grade, post-captain. This step, which, so far as selection went, fixed
his position in the navy, he received on the 25th of May, 1782.

The ten years of peace that shortly followed were passed by many
officers in retirement, which we have seen was contentedly accepted by
his distinguished contemporary, Saumarez; but Pellew was a seaman to the
marrow, and constantly sought employment afloat. When out of occupation,
he for a while tried farming, the Utopian employment that most often
beguiles the imagination of the inbred seaman in occasional weariness of
salt water; but, as his biographer justly remarks, his mind, which
allowed him to be happy only when active, could ill accommodate itself
to pursuits that almost forbade exertion. "To have an object in view,
yet to be unable to advance it by any exertions of his own, was to him a
source of constant irritation. He was wearied with the imperceptible
growth of his crops, and complained that he made his eyes ache by
watching their daily progress."

His assiduous applications, however, were not wholly unavailing to
obtain him the professional employments usually so hard to get in times
of peace. For five of the ten years, 1783-1793, he commanded frigates,
chiefly on the Newfoundland station; and in them, though now turning
thirty, he displayed the superabundant vitality and restless activity
that had characterized his early youth. "Whenever there was exertion
required aloft," wrote a midshipman who served with him at this period,
"to preserve a sail or a mast, the captain was foremost in the work,
apparently as a mere matter of amusement, and there was not a man in the
ship that could equal him in personal activity. He appeared to play
among the elements in the hardest storms. I remember once, in
close-reefing the main topsail, the captain had given his orders from
the quarter-deck and sent us aloft. On gaining the topsail yard, the
most active and daring of our party hesitated to go upon it, as the sail
was flapping violently, making it a service of great danger; but a voice
was heard from