This brought the tide well under her lee fore-chains, and set her rapidly off the land, and to windward.

As she trimmed her sails, and steadied her bowlines, she fired a gun, made the numbers of the vessels in the offing to weigh, and to pass within hail.

All this did Bluewater note, with the attention of an _amateur_, as well as with the critical analysis of a _connoisseur_.
"Very handsomely done, Master Geoffrey--very handsomely done, it must be allowed! never did a bird quit a flock with less fuss, or more beautifully, than the Plantagenet has drawn out of the fleet.

It must be admitted that Greenly knows how to handle his ship." "I fancy Captain Stowel would have done quite as well with the Caesar, sir," answered the boy, with a proper esprit-de-_ship_.

"Don't you remember, Admiral Bluewater, the time when we got under way off l'Orient, with the wind blowing a gale directly on shore?
Even Sir Gervaise said, afterwards, that we lost less ground than any ship in the fleet, and yet the Plantagenet is the most weatherly two-decker in the navy; as every body says." "Every body!--She is certainly a weatherly vessel, but not more so than several others.