"Exactly. You could not have put it better. You get no vacancies by shot
and shell, and being fit for another world, you keep out of it. Have you
ever heard me tell the story about Gunner MacCrab, of the Bellerophon?"

"Fifty times, and more than that," replied the sturdy parson, who liked
to make a little cut at the Church sometimes, but would not allow any
other hand to do it. "But now about our young friend here. Surely, with
all that we know by this time of the character of that Bony, we can see
that this peace is a mere trick of his to bamboozle us while he gets
ready. In six months we shall be at war again, hammer and tongs, as sure
as my name is Twemlow."

"So be it!" cried the Admiral, with a stamp on his oak floor, while
Scudamore's gentle eyes flashed and fell; "if it is the will of God, so
be it. But if it once begins again, God alone knows where France will be
before you and I are in our graves. They have drained all our patience,
and our pockets very nearly; but they have scarcely put a tap into our
energy and endurance. But what are they? A gang of slaves, rammed into
the cannon by a Despot."

"They seem to like it, and the question is for them. But the struggle
will be desperate, mountains of carnage, oceans of blood, universal
mourning, lamentation, and woe. And I have had enough trouble with my
tithes already."

"Tithes are dependent on the will of the Almighty," said the Admiral,
who paid more than he altogether liked; "but a war goes by reason and
good management. It encourages the best men of the day, and it brings
out the difference between right and wrong, which are quite smothered up
in peace time. It keeps out a quantity of foreign rubbish and stuff only