M.S. _Grafton_, of seventy guns,--no small honour for
a boy of hardly twenty-four,--and it proved to be no empty honour
either. No sooner had he been posted captain than he was ordered into
action. At that time there were signal and violent differences of
opinion between England and other countries,--notably Spain and
France. Gibraltar was the subject of one of them, it may be recalled.
It was to Gibraltar that Captain Warren and his good ship _Grafton_
were ordered. And when Sir. Charles Wager seized that historic bone of
contention, Peter was with the fleet that did the seizing.
From that moment he was in the thick of trouble wherever it was to be
found, like the dear, daredevil young Irishman that he was! Just a
moment let us pause to try to visualise this youthful adventurer of
ours, with the courtly manners, the irrepressible boyish recklessness
and the big heart. Our only authentic descriptions of him are of a
Peter Warren many years older; our only even probable likenesses are
the same. But let us take these, and reckoning backward see what a man
of such characteristics must have been like in his early twenties.
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