“It will be very hard, Walcott, to die in this cursed place; but should I go off, let nothing deter you from going home and accounting to the Admiralty for my command of the East India station.”

These were nearly the last intelligible words he uttered; and they serve to show how strong, even in the hour of death, was his sense of professional duty.  As Lieutenant Walcott had served during the whole of Sir Samuel’s India command in the double capacity of flag-lieutenant and secretary, and had enjoyed the Admiral’s entire confidence, he, and he alone, possessed the means of “accounting to the Admiralty” for the measures completed, or in progress, for the good of the service, and therefore the Admiral suggested to him the propriety of his going home to report matters in person.

The senior officer, who succeeded to the command in the Indian seas, felt so desirous of following up the friendly intentions of his lamented predecessor, that knowing the late Admiral’s attachment to Lieutenant Walcott, he offered to promote him into a death vacancy, which had either actually taken place, or was certain to fall within a week or two.  Moreover, he assured him, that after the necessary time had been served, he should have the first vacancy for post promotion.  These were indeed tempting offers to a young officer, devotedly attached to his profession; but they had no influence over a man bred in the “Sam Hood School.”  The Admiral’s dying injunction appeared to this right-minded officer fully as binding, or, if possible, more so, than a written command must have been in his lifetime.

To England Walcott went accordingly; and the difference in professional standing which it made to him was this:—­had he remained in India, as Sir Samuel Hood’s successor proposed, he would undoubtedly have become a post-captain of 1816, instead of which, his name stood in 1822, six years later on the list!  Had it been sixty times six, however, it would have made no difference in his conduct.

When the army returned from Spain, after the battle of Corunna, in 1809, there were between twenty and thirty officers accommodated in Sir Samuel’s cabin.  Among them was a young officer, a connection of Lady Hood’s, whose father and mother called to thank him, conceiving that he had been indebted by this connection for the attention he had received, but Sir Samuel did not even know of the connection or the name.  “Indeed,” said he, “I hardly knew the names of half my guests.  But who,” he continued, “would make any distinctions amongst such war-worn and brave fellows.”

The fact is, such was his general kindness, that each of these military officers, his passengers, fancied the Admiral was more civil to him than to any one else.  He suspended on this occasion all the usual strait-laced etiquettes of the quarter-deck discipline, and permitted the harassed soldiers to lie down and read between the guns, or wherever they pleased.  His great delight was to coddle them up, and recompense