For as the frigate had a captain; of course, so far as _she_ was concerned, our Commodore was a supernumerary.

What abundance of leisure he must have had, during a three years' cruise; how indefinitely he might have been improving his mind! But as everyone knows that idleness is the hardest work in the world, so our Commodore was specially provided with a gentleman to assist him.
This gentleman was called the _Commodore's secretary_.

He was a remarkably urbane and polished man; with a very graceful exterior, and looked much like an Ambassador Extraordinary from Versailles.

He messed with the Lieutenants in the Ward-room, where he had a state-room, elegantly furnished as the private cabinet of Pelham.

His cot-boy used to entertain the sailors with all manner of stories about the silver-keyed flutes and flageolets, fine oil paintings, morocco bound volumes, Chinese chess-men, gold shirt-buttons, enamelled pencil cases, extraordinary fine French boots with soles no thicker than a sheet of scented note-paper, embroidered vests, incense-burning sealing-wax, alabaster statuettes of Venus and Adonis, tortoise-shell snuff-boxes, inlaid toilet-cases, ivory-handled hair-brushes and mother-of-pearl combs, and a hundred other luxurious appendages scattered about this magnificent secretary's state-room.
I was a long time in finding out what this secretary's duties comprised.