Explore "The Navy Eternal" by Bartimeus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He was nearer seventy than sixty: that is to say, he was an old man as they reckon age afloat. There was a stoop about his shoulders that hinted at the burden of his years, but his eyes, blue and direct beneath ragged white eyebrows, were young enough; and a man's eyes are the mirrors of his spirit.
He stood on the quarter-deck of the armed yacht under his command, pacing slowly to and fro, with those craggy brows almost meeting above his great beak of a nose. There had been a day when a fleet would have trembled at the portent, and walked delicately, like Agag. That was when he was an admiral though, and the flag-lieutenant would have popped his head into the secretary's cabin and murmured, "Blowing up for a storm -- stand by! " Now, as he stalked with that unforgettable jerky stride of his up and down the narrow confine of the yacht's poop, he was only a commander of the Royal Naval Reserve -- a "dug-out" from the Retired List -- with three curly rings of lace on the cuffs of a monkey-jacket cut in a style unfamiliar to the present generation.