At eleven o'clock Captain Crang and Mr. Wapshott appeared on the poop in full uniform, and a further order was issued to load the guns blank for a salute.
Hitherto the Major had been but an idler about deck; but finding the crew of a gun short-handed, he volunteered his services, and was immersed in the business of loading when a hand clapped him on the shoulder. Turning, he confronted the boatswain.
"And you go for to pretend for to tell me," said Mr. Jope reproachfully, "that you're a amachoor!"
The Major was about to explain that as an officer of artillery he understood the working of a gun, when a loud banging from the town drew all eyes shoreward; and presently Captain Crang, who had been gazing in that direction through his glass, called to Mr. Wapshott, who in turn shouted an order to man the yards.
As this was an order which the Major neither understood nor, had he understood it, could comply with, he remained on deck while the sailors swarmed aloft and disposed themselves in attitudes the mere sight of which turned him giddy, so wantonly precarious they seemed.
The strains of the National Anthem from a distant key-bugle drew his eyes shoreward again, and between the moored ships he descried a white-painted gig approaching, manned by twenty oars and carrying an enormous flag on a staff astern—the Royal Standard of England.
Not until the gig, fetching a long sweep, had made a half-circuit of the Vesuvius and fallen alongside her accommodation-ladder did the Major comprehend. Captain Crang, with Mr. Wapshott behind him, had stepped down the ladder and stood at the foot of it reverently lifting his cocked hat.
That rotund, star-bedecked figure in the stern sheet, beside the Port Admiral—that classic but full-blooded face crowned with a chestnut wig.… Who could it be if not his Royal Highness the Prince Regent?
Yes, it was he. Had not our Major scanned those features often enough—in his own mirror?
The Port Admiral was inviting Captain Crang to step into the gig. The Prince nodded a careless, haughty assent, shrinking a little, however, as Mr. Wapshott passed down the clockwork of the catamaran for his royal inspection. Recovering himself, he glanced at it perfunctorily and nodded to the sailors to give way and pull towards the hull of the infernal machine.