‘Same luck, William?’ said Squire Gregory.

‘Not a point of change in the wind, Greg,’ said the captain.

They wrenched hands thereupon, like two carpet-shakers, with a report, and much in a similar attitude.

’These young gentlemen will testify to you solemnly, Greg, that I took no unfair advantage,’ said the captain; ’no whispering in passages, no appointments in gardens, no letters.  I spoke out.  Bravely, man!  And now, Greg, referring to the state of your cellar, our young friends here mean to float with us to-night.  It is now half-past eleven A.M.  Your dinner-hour the same as usual, of course?  Therefore at four P.M. the hour of execution.  And come, Greg, you and I will visit the cellar.  A dozen and half of light and half-a-dozen of the old family—­that will be about the number of bottles to give me my quietus, and you yours—­all of us!  And you, young gentlemen, take your guns or your rods, and back and be dressed by the four bell, or you ’ll not find the same man in Billy Bulsted.’

Temple was enraptured with him.  He declared he had been thinking seriously for a long time of entering the Navy, and his admiration of the captain must have given him an intuition of his character, for he persuaded me to send to Riversley for our evening-dress clothes, appearing in which at the dinner-table, we received the captain’s compliments, as being gentlemen who knew how to attire ourselves to suit an occasion.  The occasion, Squire Gregory said, happened to him too often for him to distinguish it by the cut of his coat.

’I observe, nevertheless, Greg, that you have a black tie round your neck instead of a red one,’ said the captain.

‘Then it came there by accident,’ said Squire Gregory.

’Accident!  There’s no such thing as accident.  If I wander out of the house with a half dozen or so in me, and topple into the brook, am I accidentally drowned?  If a squall upsets my ship, is she an accidental residue of spars and timber and old iron?  If a woman refuses me, is that an accident?  There’s a cause for every disaster:  too much cargo, want of foresight, want of pluck.  Pooh! when I’m hauled prisoner into a foreign port in time of war, you may talk of accidents.  Mr. Harry Richmond, Mr. Temple, I have the accidental happiness of drinking to your healths in a tumbler of hock wine.  Nominative, hic, haec, hoc.’

Squire Gregory carried on the declension, not without pride.  The Vocative confused him.

‘Claret will do for the Vocative,’ said the captain, gravely; ’the more so as there is plenty of it at your table, Greg.  Ablative hoc, hac, hoc, which sounds as if the gentleman had become incapable of speech beyond the name of his wine.  So we will abandon the declension of the article for a dash of champagne, which there’s no declining, I hope.  Wonderful men, those Romans!  They fought their ships well, too.  A question to you, Greg.  Those heathen Pagan dogs had a religion that encouraged them to swear.  Now, my experience of life pronounces it to be a human necessity to rap out an oath here and there.  What do you say?’