ships shoreward. He felt the wind freshening as it southered and he
left the Fleet behind: he watched their many lanterns as they sank
out of sight, then the glow of flares by the light of which
dead-tired men were repairing damages, cutting away wreckage.
His ship was wallowing heavily now, with the gale after her,--and now
dawn was breaking clean and glorious on the swell off Lizard Point.
A Mount's Bay lugger had spied them, and lying in wait, had sheered
up close alongside, her crew bawling for news. He had not forbidden
his men to call it back, and he could see the fellows' faces now, as
it reached them from the speaking-trumpet: "Great victory--twenty
taken or sunk--Admiral Nelson killed!" They had guessed something,
noting the _Pickle's_ ensign at half-mast: yet as they took in the
purport of the last three words, these honest fishermen had turned
and stared at one another; and without one answering word, the lugger
had been headed straight back to the mainland.

So it had been at Falmouth. A ship entering port has a thousand eyes
upon her, and the _Pickle's_ errand could not be hidden. The news
seemed in some mysterious way to have spread even before he stepped
ashore there on the Market Strand. A small crowd had collected, and,
as he passed through it, many doffed their hats. There was no
cheering at all--no, not for this the most glorious victory of the
war--outshining even the Nile or Howe's First of June.

He had set his face as he walked to the inn. But the news had
flown before him, and fresh crowds gathered to watch him off.
The post-boys knew . . . and _they_ told the post-boys at the next
stage, and the next--Bodmin and Plymouth--not to mention the boatmen
at Torpoint Ferry. But the countryside did not know: nor the
labourers gathering in cider apples heaped under Devon apple-trees,