"Yes, my lord—or nearly so."
"And what were you about, John, to stand with your hands in your pockets at such a time? Egad, 'twas not like an old 25th man?"
The quartermaster reddened.
"There was a tremendous gale from the seaward," said Lady Rohallion, coming to his assistance; "a storm—a tempest——"
"And she came only within a mile of the Partan Craig, where the unfortunate merchantman was in sore peril—a foe on one side, a lee shore on the other—eh, dominie?"
"'Here Scylla bellows from her dire abodes,
Tremendous port—abhorred by men and gods,
And there Charybdis,'
as old Homer hath it," replied the dominie, promptly.
"Even had the battery been manned, my lord, I am doubtful—I am doubtful if these old twenty-four pounders would pitch shot so far; and she scarcely appeared, before she hauled her wind and disappeared into the mist," said Girvan, giving his old yellow wig an angry twist.
"Some of these small craft are growing very saucy," said Lord Rohallion, to change the subject, which he saw was distasteful to his old comrade. "It was only the other day that a lieutenant with fourteen men from one of our gun-brigs landed on the coast of France to distribute royalist manifestoes of the Comte d'Artois, dated from Holyrood, but he and his men were taken by a party of dragoons who surrounded an auberge in which they were imprudently drinking. They were instantly hanged as spies, by order of General Monnet, and the bodies are to be seen on fifteen gibbets, a mile apart, along the coast between Boulogne and Cape Grisnez."
"Poor men! How horrible!" exclaimed Lady Winifred.