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There was an exclamation below.

While we craned out to see what had happened, the waiter’s voice smote on our ears from the doorway behind us, saying that young gentlemen would be young gentlemen all the world over, but a new beaver hat couldn’t be bought for ten shillings. Everything must have a beginning, of course, but the gentleman below was annoyed, and threatened to come upstairs. It wasn’t perhaps exactly the thing to come to the Port Admiral’s ears: but if we left it to him (the waiter) he had a notion that ten shillings, with a little tact, might clear it, and no bones broken.

Hartnoll, somewhat white in the face, tendered the sum, and very pluckily declined to let me bear my share. “You’ll excuse me, Rodd,” said he politely, “but I must make it a point of honour.” Pale though he was, I believe he would have offered to fight me had I insisted.

Our instructions, it turned out, were identical. We were to be called for at the Blue Posts, and a boat would fetch us off to the Melpomene frigate. Her captain, it appeared, was a kind of second cousin of Hartnoll’s: for me, I had been recommended to him by a cousin of my father’s, a member of the Board of Admiralty. Captain the Hon. John Suckling treated us, nearly or remotely as we might be connected with him, with impartiality that night. No boat came off for us. We learned that the Melpomene was lying at Spithead, waiting (so the waiter told us) to carry out a new Governor with his suite to Barbados; which possibly accounted for her captain’s neglect of such small fry as two midshipmen. The waiter, however, advised us not to trouble ourselves. He would make it all right in the morning.

So Hartnoll and I supped together in the empty coffee-room; compared notes; drank a pint of port apiece; and under its influence became boastful. Insensibly the adventure of the beaver hat came to wear the aspect of a dashing practical joke. It encouraged us to exchange confidences of earlier deeds of derring-do, of bird-nesting, of rook-shooting, of angling for trout, of encounters with poachers. I remember crossing my knees, holding up my glass to the light, and remarking sagely that some poachers were not at all bad fellows. Hartnoll agreed that it depended how you took ’em. We lauded Norfolk and Devon as sporting counties, and somehow it was understood that they respectively owed much of their reputation to the families of Hartnoll and Rodd. Hartnoll even hinted at a love-affair: but here I discouraged him with a frown, which implied that as seamen we saw that weakness in its proper light. I have wondered, since then, to what extent we imposed upon one another: in fact, I daresay, very little; but in spirit we gave and took fire. We were two ardent boys, and we meant well.

“Here’s to the Service!” said I, holding up my glass.

“To the Service!” echoed Hartnoll; drained his, set it down, and looked across at me with a flushed face.

“With quick promotion and a plenty of prize-money!” said a voice in the doorway. It was that diabolical waiter again, entering to remove the cloth: and for a moment I felt my ears redden. Recovering myself, I told him pretty strongly not to intrude again upon the conversation of gentlemen; but added that since he had presumed to take part in the toast, he might fetch himself a tankard of beer and drink to it. Whereupon he thanked me, begged my pardon for having taken the liberty, and immediately took another, telling me that anyone having his experience of young gentlemen could see with half an eye that I was born to command.

“Tell you what,” said I to Hartnoll when the waiter had left us, “that fellow has given me a notion, with his talk about prize-money. I don’t half like owing you my share of that ten shillings, you know.”