k,
you say? Well, there's no hope for the tender dears if 'tis the
Manacles. You'd better run down and help yonder; though 'tis little help
any man can give. Not one came in alive while I was there. The tide's
flowing, an' she won't hold together another hour, they say.'

"Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast when my father got down to
the Point. Six men had been cast up alive, or just breathing--a seaman
and five troopers. The seaman was the only one that had breath to speak;
and while they were carrying him into the town, the word went round that
the ship's name was the 'Despatch,' transport, homeward bound from
Corunna, with a detachment of the Seventh Hussars, that had been
fighting out there with Sir John Moore. The seas had rolled her further
over by this time, and given her decks a pretty sharp slope; but a dozen
men still held on, seven by the ropes near the ship's waist, a couple
near the break of the poop, and three on the quarter-deck. Of these
three my father made out one to be the skipper; close to him clung an
officer in full regimentals--his name, they heard after, was Captain
Duncanfield; and last came the tall trumpeter; and if you'll believe me,
the fellow was making shift there, at the very last, to blow 'God Save
the King.' What's more, he got to 'Send us victorious,' before an extra
big sea came bursting across and washed them off the deck--every man but
one of the pair beneath the poop--and he dropped his hold before the
next wave; being stunned, I reckon. The others went out of sight at
once, but the trumpeter--being, as I said, a powerful man as well as a
tough swimmer--rose like a duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and
came in on the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him broke
like an egg at their very feet; but when the smother cleared, there he
was, lying face downward on a ledge below them; and one of the men that
happened to have a rope round him--I forget the fellow's name, if I ever
heard it--jumped down and grabbed him by the ankle as he began to slip
back. Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high enough to be
out of harm, and another heave brought them up to grass. Quick work, but
master trumpeter wasn't quite dead; nothing worse than a cracked head
and three staved ribs. In twenty minutes or so they had him in bed, with
the doctor to tend him.

Now was the time--nothing being left alive upon the transport--for my
father to tell of the sloop he'd seen driving