‘A coat-of-arms, supported on this side by a sailor.’
Her companion nodded with satisfaction. ‘On the other side of that figure-head is a marine.’
‘She is twisting round in a curious way, and her sails sink in like old cheeks, and she shivers like a leaf upon a tree.’
‘She is in stays, for the larboard tack. I can see what she’s been doing. She’s been re’ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou’-west, and she’s bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d’ye see, they made sail to the west’ard. Captain Hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current about here, being a native.’
‘And now I can see the other side; it is a soldier where a sailor was before. You are sure it is the Victory?’
‘I am sure.’
After this a frigate came into view—the Euryalus—sailing in the same direction. Anne sat down, and her eyes never left the ships. ‘Tell me more about the Victory,’ she said.
‘She is the best sailer in the service, and she carries a hundred guns. The heaviest be on the lower deck, the next size on the middle deck, the next on the main and upper decks. My son Ned’s place is on the lower deck, because he’s short, and they put the short men below.’
Bob, though not tall, was not likely to be specially selected for shortness. She pictured him on the upper deck, in his snow-white trousers and jacket of navy blue, looking perhaps towards the very point of land where she then was.
The great silent ship, with her population of blue-jackets, marines, officers, captain, and the admiral who was not to return alive, passed like a phantom the meridian of the Bill. Sometimes her aspect was that of a large white bat, sometimes that of a grey one. In the course of time the watching girl saw that the ship had passed her nearest point; the breadth of her sails diminished by foreshortening, till she assumed the form of an egg on end. After this something seemed to twinkle, and Anne, who had previously withdrawn from the old sailor, went back to him, and looked again through the glass. The twinkling was the light falling upon the cabin windows of the ship’s stern. She explained it to the old man.