As soon as the tea-things were gone, Uncle Bat yawned and shook himself, and asked if it was not nearly time to go to bed.

'Whenever you like, Uncle Bat,' said Mrs. Woodward, who began to find that she agreed with Gertrude, that early habits on the part of her uncle would be a family blessing. 'But perhaps you'll take something before you go?'

'Well, I don't mind if I do take a thimbleful of rum-and-water.' So the odious spirit-bottle was again brought into the drawing-room.

'Did you call at the Admiralty, sir, as you came through town?' said Alaric.

'Call at the Admiralty, sir!' said the captain, turning sharply round at the questioner; 'what the deuce should I call at the Admiralty for? craving the ladies' pardon.'

'Well, indeed, I don't know,' said Alaric, not a bit abashed. 'But sailors always do call there, for the pleasure, I suppose, of kicking their heels in the lords' waiting-room.'

'I have done with that game,' said Captain Cuttwater, now wide awake; and in his energy he poured half a glass more rum into his beaker. 'I've done with that game, and I'll tell you what, Mr. Tudor, if I had a dozen sons to provide for tomorrow—— '

'Oh, I do so wish you had,' said Katie; 'it would be such fun. Fancy Uncle Bat having twelve sons, Gertrude. What would you call them all, uncle?'

'Why, I tell you what, Miss Katie, I wouldn't call one of them a sailor. I'd sooner make tailors of them.'

'Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief,' said Katie. 'That would only be eight; what should the other four be, uncle?'

'You're quite right, Captain Cuttwater,' said Alaric, 'at least as far as the present moment goes; but the time is coming when things at the Admiralty will be managed very differently.'

'Then I'm d—— if that time can come too soon—craving the ladies' pardon!' said Uncle Bat.

'I don't know what you mean, Alaric,' said Harry Norman, who was just at present somewhat disposed to contradict his friend, and not ill-inclined to contradict the captain also; 'as far as I can judge, the Admiralty is the very last office the Government will think of touching.'

'The Government!' shouted Captain Cuttwater; 'oh! if we are to wait for the Government, the navy may go to the deuce, sir.'

'It's the pressure from without that must do the work,' said Alaric.

'Pressure from without!' said Norman, scornfully; 'I hate to hear such trash.'

'We'll see, young gentleman, we'll see,' said the captain; 'it may be trash, and it may be right that five fellows who never did the Queen a day's service in their life, should get fifteen hundred or two thousand a year, and have the power of robbing an old sailor like me of the reward due to me for sixty years' hard work. Reward! no; but the very wages that I have actually earned. Look at me now, d—— me, look at me! Here I am, Captain Cuttwater—with sixty years' service—and I've done more perhaps for the Queen's navy than—than—— '