Quarterdeck and Fok'sle, Stories of the Sea (ePub)

Excerpt: 'The friendship between Young Brydell and Grubb the marine came about in this way. One morning in May, just after Admiral Beaumont had finished the beautiful toilet he made at precisely eight o'clock every morning, he threw wide his bedroom shutters to see if the toilet of the navy yard grounds had been made too. For the admiral was possessed by a demon of neatness and order that is apt to develop in a naval officer long used to the perfect cleanliness and discipline of a man-of-war. The admiral was the tenderest-hearted old fellow in the world, but the strictest sort of martial law prevailed in the matter of tidiness in every part of the navy yard over which he exercised or could claim jurisdiction. A perpetual warfare raged between him and the nursemaids at the yard. The nursemaids would let the babies roll over on the admiral's dearly loved grass, and the sight of white dimity sunbonnets, dropped on the gravel paths, was not wholly unknown. The admiral was a bachelor of long standing and had a wholesome awe of babies and their mammas, although he ordered the babies' papas about without any awe of them whatever. In vain he tried to negotiate with the officers' wives, offering as a basis that the babies be permitted a promenade around the main walks between two and four every day, the walks to be immediately rolled afterward. The officers' wives simply laughed at him, and the babies continued to kick up the gravel, and the admiral retired completely discomfited.'