This book is inscribed to those commanders under whom the author has hadthe honour to serve, who have achieved firmness without asperity, tactand sympathy without interference, and appreciation without fuss. It isinscribed to these gentlemen because while they lack the gift ofself-advertisement, they have contrived, in spite of the trials andexasperations of a seafaring existence, to engage the respect andaffections of their lieutenants.
PREFATORY NOTE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CONCLUSION
This tale is an original invention. It is not founded upon fact, nor arethe characters herein described portraits of actual persons. Theincidents and topography are imaginary.
W. M.
She was one of those girls who have become much more common of lateyears among the upper-middle classes, the comfortably fixed classes,than they have ever been since the aristocracy left off marrying Italianprime-donne. You know the type of English beauty, so often insistedon, say, twenty years ago—placid, fair, gentle, blue-eyed, fining intodistinction in Lady Clara Vere de Vere? Always she was the heroine, andher protagonist, the adventuress, was dark and wicked. For some occultreason the Lady Rowena type was the fashion.
Ada Rivers was one of those girls who have come up since. Theupper-middle classes had experienced many incursions. All sorts ofastonishing innovations had taken place. Many races had come to England,or rather to London, which is in England but not of it; had made money,had bred their sons at the great public schools and universities andtheir daughters at convents in France and Belgium. These dark-haired,gray-eyed, stylish, highly strung, athletic, talented girls arephenomena of the Stockbroking Age. They do things Lady Rowena and LadyClara Vere de Vere would not tolerate for a moment. Outwardly resemblingthe wealthy Society Girl, they are essentially quite different. Somemarry artists and have emotional outbreaks. Some combine a very genuineromantic t