"Well, Harney," said I. "It is a fine calm day to-day."
"You may say that, Lord Char-less, but what little wind there is, is terrible strong," says Harney.
A lady once said to him, "How old are you, Harney?"
"Och, shure, it's very ould and jaded I am, it's not long I'll be for this worrld," said he.
"Oh," said she, "but I'm old, too. How old do you think I am?"
"Sure, how would I know that? But whatever age ye are, ye don't look it, Milady."
After a brief spell in the royal yacht, I was promoted out of her to lieutenant, and was appointed to the _Galatea_, Captain H.R.H. Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh, K.G., K.T.
H.M.S. _Galatea_ had four months previously returned from the long cruise of seventeen months, 24th January, 1867, to 26th June, 1868, during which the Duke visited South Africa and Australasia. While he was in Australia, an attempt had been made to assassinate his Royal Highness, who had a very narrow escape. The pistol was fired at the range of a few feet, and the bullet, entering the Duke's back, struck a rib and ran round the bone, inflicting a superficial wound. A full account of the voyage is contained in _The Cruise of H.M.S. Galatea_, by the Rev. John Milner and Oswald W. Brierley (London, 1869; W. H. Allen). The _Galatea_ frigate was built at Woolwich and launched in 1859. She was of 3227 tons burthen, 800 h.p.; she was pierced for 26 guns; maindeck, 18 guns, 10-inch, 86 cwt., and 4 guns, 10-inch, 6½ tons; on the quarterdeck, 2 guns, rifled, 64-pounders; in the forecastle, 2 guns, rifled, 64-pounders. The 6½-ton guns threw a shot of 115 lb., and a large double-shell weighing 156 lb. She stowed 700 tons of coal and 72 tons of water. Previously the _Galatea_, commanded by Captain Rochfort Maguire, had been employed from 1862 to 1866 in the Baltic, and on the Mediterranean and West Indian stations. She { 74} took part in the suppression of the insurrection at Jamaica, and, after the loss of H.M.S. _Bulldog_, destroyed the batteries on Cape Haitien. Her sister ship was the _Ariadne_, and Admiral Penrose Fitzgerald, who served in the _Ariadne_, in 1861, writes: "It would not be too much to say that she and her sister ship, the _Galatea_, were the two finest wooden frigates ever built in this or any other country" (_Memories of the Sea_). Personally, I am inclined to consider, that fine sailor as the _Galatea_ was, the _Sutlej_ was finer still.