"D----d impertinence!" says he. "I'll race him, and beat him any day in the week." And he continued to use forcible language.
"You can do that," I said, for the admiral was riding one of my best horses.
"If you really want a race, I'll arrange the whole thing," said I. And I brought the two wrathful old gentlemen { 116} together, rode with them to the starting-point, gave the word, and off they went as hard as they could pelt. I followed, cheering them on. The general began to draw ahead, when his horse baulked at a soft place. The admiral's horse did the same, throwing his rider upon his neck.
"Get back into the saddle and he'll go through," I shouted, for I knew the horse. The admiral hove himself into his seat, and won the race. He wouldn't have won, if his adversary hadn't baulked.
The members of the Board of Admiralty came down to Plymouth to witness the autumn military manoeuvres. I offered to drive them all in my coach; and they were settled in their places--Mr. Goschen the First Lord, Admiral Sir Alexander Milne, the Earl of Camperdown and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre--when out of the house came Rear-Admiral Beauchamp Seymour.
"Get down!" he shouted. "Gentlemen, you must get down."
"You don't know that boy," said Seymour. "He's not safe. He'll upset you on purpose, just to say he's upset the whole Board of Admiralty!"
And he actually ordered my guests off my coach, so that they had to go in barouches.
Sir Harry Keppel often came sailing with me in my little yacht. We were out together, when I said to him,
"Then run into her, my dear boy," said Keppel placidly.
I held on, and we cleared the jib-boom of the ironclad by an inch.
Sir Harry had an old friend of his to stay with him, Captain Clifton, a most remarkable and interesting man. In the old days, the passage for the opium trade existing between China and India was taken only once a year--the opium ships running up to China with one monsoon and down to India with the other. Clifton went to the Government { 117} of India and undertook, if the Government would permit him to build vessels to his own design, to build clippers to thrash up against the monsoon as well as run before it, and so double the income accruing from the opium trade. The Government consenting, Clifton designed the _Blue Jacket_ and the _Red Jacket_ and vessels of that class, which were the famous opium clippers of the "roaring forties" and fifties.