seemed as if manhood had come to them both in a more serious form
than a swaggering indulgence in tobacco.

The boys were obviously brothers, but not aggressively twins. For
Luke was darker than Fitz, and somewhat shorter in stature.

It is probable that neither of them had ever seriously contemplated
the possibility of failure for one and not for the other. Neither
had ever looked onward, as it were, into life to see himself there
without the other. The life that they both anticipated was that
life on the ocean wave, of which home-keeping poets sing so
eloquently; and it had always been vaguely taken for granted that no
great difference in rank or success could sever them. Fitz was too
simple-minded, too honest to himself, to look for great honours in
his country's service. He mistrusted himself. Luke mistrusted
Providence.

Such was the difference between these two boys--the thin end of a
wedge of years which, spreading out in after days, turned each life
into a path of its own, sending each man inexorably on his separate
way.

These two boys were almost alone in the world. Their mother had
died in giving them birth. Their father, an old man when he
married, reached his allotted span when his sons first donned Her
Majesty's brass buttons, and quietly went to keep his watch below.
Discipline had been his guiding star through life, and when Death
called him he obeyed without a murmur, trusting confidently to the
Naval Department in the first place, and the good God in the second,
to look after his boys.