chunk: In some way Mesty is the real hero of the novel, as he pulls Easy out of several scrapes the impulsive 17-year-old gets himself into as he cruises the Mediterranean on several British ships.
  Easy becomes a competent officer, in spite of his notions. Easy's mother dies, and he returns home to find his father is completely mad. Easy senior has developed an apparatus for reducing or enlarging phrenological bumps on the skull, but as he attempts to reduce his own benevolence bump, the machine kills him. Easy throws out the criminal servants his father has employed and puts the estate to rights, demanding back rents from the tenants, and evicting those who will not pay. Using his new-found wealth, he formally quits the navy, rigs out his own privateering vessel, and returns to Sicily to claim his bride Agnes. As he is a wealthy gentleman now, no longer a junior midshipman, her family cannot refuse him, and he and Agnes live happily ever after.