ps having been towed into the roads that
morning. The picture among the shipping was one of extreme activity and
liveliness. Jury-masts were going up in the Warspite; lower and
top-sail-yards were down to be fished, or new ones were rigging to be
sent aloft in their places; the Plantagenet was all a-tanto, again, in
readiness for another action, with rigging secured and masts fished,
while none but an instructed eye could have detected, at a short
distance, that the Caesar, Carnatic, Dover, York, Elizabeth, and one or
two more, had been in action at all. The landing was crowded with boats
as before, and gun-room servants and midshipmen's boys were foraging as
usual; some with honest intent to find delicacies for the wounded, but
more with the roguish design of contributing to the comforts of the
unhurt, by making appeals to the sympathies of the women of the
neighbourhood, in behalf of the hurt.

The principal transformation that had been brought about by this state
of things, however, was apparent at the station. This spot had the
appearance of a place to which the headquarters of an army had been
transferred, in the vicissitudes of the field; warlike sailors, if not
soldiers, flocking to it, as the centre of interest and intelligence.
Still there was a singularity observable in the manner in which these
heroes of the deck paid their court; the cottage being seemingly
tabooed, or at most, approached by very few, while the grass at the foot
of the flag-staff was already beginning to show proofs of the pressure
of many feet. This particular spot, indeed, was the centre of
attraction; there, officers of all ranks and ages were constantly
arriving, and thence they were as often departing; all bearing
countenances sobered by anxiety and apprehension. Notwithstanding the
constant mutations, there had been no instant since the rising of the
sun, when some ten or twelve, at least, including captains, lieutenants,
masters and idlers, had not been collected around the bench at the foot
of the signal-staff, and frequently the number reached even to twenty.

A little retired from the crowd, and near the verge of the cliff, a
large tent had been pitched. A marine paced in its front, as a sentinel.
Another stood near the gate of the little door-yard of the cottage, and
all persons who approached either, with the exception of a few of the
privileged, were referred to the sergeant who commanded the guard. The
arms of the latter were