“My father,” said Hardy, “is an old commander in the royal navy. He was a second cousin of Nelson’s[31] Hardy, and that, I believe, was what led him into the navy, for he had no interest whatever of his own. It was a visit which Nelson’s Hardy, then a young lieutenant, paid to his relative, my grandfather, which decided my father, he has told me; but he always had a strong bent to sea, though he was a boy of very studious habits.

“However, those were times when brave men who knew and loved their profession couldn’t be overlooked, and my dear old father fought his way up step by step—not very fast, certainly, but still fast enough to keep him in heart about his chances in life.

“He was made commander towards the end of the war, and got a ship, in which he sailed with a convoy of merchantmen from Bristol. It was the last voyage he ever made in active service; but the Admiralty was so well satisfied with his conduct in it that they kept his ship in commission two years after peace was declared. And well they might be, for in the Spanish main he fought an action which lasted, on and off, for two days, with a French sloop-of-war, and a privateer, either of which ought to have been a match for him. But he had been with Vincent in the Arrow, and was not likely to think much of such small odds as that. At any rate, he beat them off, and not a prize could either of them make out of his convoy, though I believe his ship was never fit for anything afterwards, and was broken up as soon as she was out of commission. We have got her compasses,[32] and the old flag which flew at the peak through the whole voyage, at home now. It was my father’s own flag, and his fancy to have it always flying. More than half the men were killed or badly hit—the dear old father among the rest. A ball took off part of his knee-cap, and he had to fight the last six hours of the action sitting in a chair on the quarter-deck; but he says it made the men fight better than when he was among them, seeing him sitting there sucking oranges.

“Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted sword with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give me his old service-sword, which used to hang by the other, and he gave it me at once, though I was only a la............