He was a raving, deafening, devastating typhoon, laying waste the cowering seas but with an unvexed refuge in the centre where all comers were safe and at rest.

Nobody could know the "Admiral" without liking him; and in a sudden and dire emergency I think no friend of his would know which to choose--to be cursed by him or prayed for by a less efficient person.
His Title of "Admiral" was more strictly "official" than any ever worn by a naval officer before or since, perhaps--for it was the voluntary offering of a whole nation, and came direct from the people themselves without any intermediate red tape--the people of the Sandwich Islands.
It was a title that came to him freighted with affection, and honor, and appreciation of his unpretending merit.

And in testimony of the genuineness of the title it was publicly ordained that an exclusive flag should be devised for him and used solely to welcome his coming and wave him God-speed in his going.

From that time forth, whenever his ship was signaled in the offing, or he catted his anchor and stood out to sea, that ensign streamed from the royal halliards on the parliament house and the nation lifted their hats to it with spontaneous accord.
Yet he had never fired a gun or fought a battle in his life.

When I knew him on board the Ajax, he was seventy-two years old and had plowed the salt water sixty-one of them.