During the whole course of my journey to England, Captain Battleax never said a word to me about the Fixed Period. He was no doubt a gallant officer, and possessed of all necessary gifts for the management of a 250-ton steam swivel-gun; but he seemed to me to be somewhat heavy. He never even in conversation alluded to Britannula, and spoke always of the dockyard at Devonport as though I had been familiar with its every corner. He was very particular about his clothes, and I was told by Lieutenant Crosstrees on the first day that he would resent it as a bitter offence had I come down to dinner without a white cravat. "He's right, you know; those things do tell," Crosstrees had said to me when I had attempted to be jocose about these punctilios. I took care, however, always to put on a white cravat both with the captain and with the officers. After dinner with the captain, a cup of coffee was always brought in on a silver tray, in a silver coffee-pot. This was leisurely consumed; and then, as I soon understood, the captain expected that I should depart. I learnt afterwards that he immediately put his feet up on the sofa and slept for the remainder of the evening. I retired to the lieutenant's cabin, and there discussed the whole history of Britannula over many a prolonged cigar.
"Did you really mean to kill the old men?" said Lord Alfred Percy to me one day; "regularly to cut their throats, you know, and carry them out and burn them."
"Every poor old fellow would have been put an end to without the slightest mercy?"
"Now, there's my governor's father," said Lord Alfred; "you know who he is?"
"The Duke of Northumberland, I'm informed."
"He's a terrible swell. He owns three castles, and half a county, and has half a million a-year. I can hardly tell you what sort of an old fellow he is at home. There isn't any one who doesn't pay him the most profound respect, and he's always doing good to everybody. Do you mean to say that some constable or cremator,--some sort of first hangman,--would have come to him and taken him by the nape of his neck, and cut his throat, just because he was sixty-eight years old? I can't believe that anybody would have done it."
"If he committed murder, he would be hanged in spite of his dukedom."