CHAPTER XXXIII.

GREENWICH AND THE ACADEMY.

KING LUD was almost frantic with delight on account of an ovation which was to be paid to him, not by the multitudes of the city, which his great namesake is said to have founded, but by two or three quite private and obscure persons, one of whom, a squareshouldered little individual, with a strong dash of the child still in her wilful girlhood, had turned the unfortunate fellow's head. His friends, with Marianne Dugdale among them, were to go down to Greenwich to spend an afternoon there under his leadership and drink tea in his room. Lady Fermor declared herself equal to the effort, even though it had been a dinner in the Trafalgar, a great deal better than the Ministerial white-bait dinners, such a dinner as she had been accustomed to attend at least

once or twice in the season, both there and at the Star and Garter, Richmond, with shady cronies whose disreputable names were no longer heard, while happily the very scandals in which they had figured were fast being forgotten.

The day was as fine as could have been wished for a family party,' as Lady Fermor called it, complaining that there was a danger of its being as dull as family parties generally were. They drove down to the dirty little old town of Elizabethan and naval memories, and made their way to the grand terrace before Queen Mary's and Sir Christopher Wren's Hospital, which time's changes have converted into a college. Everybody's spirits rose. How could he or she help it under the inspiring influence of the blue sky and the wide flowing river-the great watery highway to the largest city in the world? The widening mouth of the English Thames, which, though it is little among its mighty brethren the Volga and the Danube, the Ganges and the Euphrates, the Nile and the Niger, the monster Amazon and Mississippi, yet bears upon its breast such a huge and precious burden of traffic as they

never knew. A brown streak' turned up with silver, it swayed and rippled and throbbed, with its fringes of tall masts and flapping sails, from Gravesend to Wapping; its Isle of Dogs converted into a customhouse station; its Deptford ringing with hammers as when Peter the Great riveted a bolt there; its Woolwich Marshes bounding the Arsenal, where Woolwich infants are cradled and rocked. Barges laden with hay and coals crept lazily along with the sunlight red in their umber-coloured sails. Steamers churned the water as they darted by, puffing out grey smoke and wreaths of white vapour. Here was the column erected to the gallant young Frenchman Bellot, who earned the gratitude of a foreign nation by the fruitless attempt to discover its lost heroes beyond the terrible barriers of everlasting snows and huge glittering icebergs. He left half his tale untold, but there was a living mansandy-haired, moon-faced, large - limbed, standing there, among the everyday group, who, if he were permitted to leave out his own doings, could add something to the fascinating ghastly story.

Within the big-domed building was the

Painted Hall, with the portraits of all the Captains bold of whom the best artist in each man's day could leave a token. There were the reflections-often with the show of their ships at their backs-of Drake and Blake, Rodney and Anson, Cloudesley Shovel and Benbow; and in a shrine by himself the various representations of Harry Bluff,' of whom, when he was a fearless middy, the old salts had sworn,

'One day he'd lead the van ;'

and here he was, from the maimed lad still foremost in the fray, to the man with many orders on his breast dying in the cockpit of the Victory.

As if these were not mighty names enough to conjure with, and pathetic stories sufficient to melt the hardest heart, there were the weather-worn, far-borne, simply tragic relics of the last holocaust to the spirit of the North Cape, the sad trophies brought back by Dr. Rae battered spoons with familiar crests and initials, a watch long stopped, torn leaves from a Bible and from Oliver Goldsmith's sweet old English inland story, in which there is no echo of the thunder of the surf,

and little more travelling, after all, than what is chronicled in the first chapter of the book of the change from the Blue Bed to the Brown.

For once King Lud was the most favoured of men in his surroundings, and he rose to the occasion. He descanted, all the more tellingly that it was with modesty and sincerity, on the true glory of his profession, its adventures, exposure, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. Who could think of the advantages of a good English estate, even of a fine old English manor-house and an ancient title, at such a moment? Not Marianne Dugdale, who was entranced with all she saw and heard, until she envied the little boys climbing the rigging of the training ship and the very invalids in the floating hospital of the Dreadnought. She had the different parts of the vessels, the science of their steering, the method of their logs, the movements of their compasses explained to her. She did not tire of hearing the curious details of their flags and signals; she was not at rest till she had walked across the park where Greenwich Fair was wont to be held, as far as the Observatory, to have her watch set by the great dial, and she honoured