While you are under my orders I shall expect from you prompt, unquestioned compliance with my commands, or those of my officers, and a ready submission to the hard discipline of a ship-of-war, to which most of you, I suspect, are unfamiliar, unless you have learned it in that bitter school, a British ship.

You will learn, however, while principles of equality are very well in civil life, they have no place in the naval service.

Subordination is the word here; this is not a trading-vessel, but a ship-of-war, and I intend to be implicitly obeyed," he continued sternly, looking even more fiercely at them.

"Nevertheless," he added, somewhat relaxing his set features, "although we be not a peaceful merchantman, yet I expect and intend to do a little trading with the ships of the enemy, and in any prizes which we may capture, you know you will all have a just, nay, a liberal, share.

It must not be lost sight of, however, that the first business of this ship, as of every other ship-of-war of our country, is to fight the ships of the enemy of equal, or of not too great, force.