our epaulette without loss of
time, and if you are steady and well conducted you may look out for a
brilliant position. It is not many lads who enter the navy under such
favorable conditions. I should advise you to study hard in order to
fit yourself for command when the time should come. From what you tell
me your education has not been neglected, and I have no doubt you know
as much as the majority of my midshipmen as to books. But books are
not all. An officer in his majesty's service should be a gentleman.
That you are that in manner, I am happy to see. But it is desirable
also that an officer should be able in all society to hold his own in
point of general knowledge with other gentlemen. Midshipmen, as a
class, are too much given to shirking their studies, and to think that
if an officer can handle and fight a ship it is all that is required.
It may be all that is absolutely necessary, but you will find that the
men who have most made their mark are all something more than rough
sailors. I need say nothing to you as to the necessity of at all times
and hazards doing your duty. That is a lesson that you have clearly
already learned."

As the fleet still kept east, expectation rose higher and higher as to
the object of the expedition. Some supposed that a dash was to be made
on Holland. Others conceived that the object of the expedition must be
one of the North German or Russian forts, and the latter were
confirmed in their ideas when one fine morning the fleet were found to
be entering the Sound. Instead of passing through, however, the fleet
anchored here, out of gunshot of the forts of Copenhagen; and great
was the astonishment of the officers and men alike of the fleet when
it became known that an ultimatum had been sent on shore, and that the
Danes (who had been regarded as a neutral power) were called upon at
once to surrender their fleet to the English.

Upon the face of facts known to the world at large, this was indeed a
most monstrous breach of justice and right. The Danes had taken no
part in the great struggle which had been going on, and their
sympathies were generally supposed to be with the English rather than
the French. Thus, for a fleet to appear before the capital of Denmark,
and to summon its king to surrender his fleet, appeared a high-handed
act of brute force.

In fact, however, the English government had learned that negotiations
had been proceeding between the Danish government and the Fr