In the Harwich boat-shed, nearly fifty years before, he had contracted--in defiance of prophesied failure--to build the Hastings sloop of war for His Majesty King George the Third's Lords of the Admiralty.

This contract was the thin end of that wedge which eventually split the mighty oak block of Government patronage into three-deckers and ships of the line; which did good service under Pellew, Parker, Nelson, Hood; which exfoliated and ramified into huge dockyards at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness, and bore, as its buds and flowers, countless barrels of measly pork and maggoty biscuit.

The sole aim of the coarse, pushing and hard-headed son of Dick Devine was to make money.

He had cringed and crawled and fluttered and blustered, had licked the dust off great men's shoes, and danced attendance in great men's ante-chambers.

Nothing was too low, nothing too high for him.