Kit awoke with a start.

The dormer made a patch of diamond light in the dead of the wall, and the chill of dawn sharpened the air.

Blob was bending over him.

"Nelson's a-comin," he announced, much as he might have said breakfast was in.

Kit looked up into the round pink face, fresh as a daisy, and dewy- eyed above him.

"No!" he cried, and started to his elbow.

"He is though, lad," said the Parson at the window, very quiet.

Kit was beside him in a minute.

The mattress was down, and the Parson, leaning out into the blue, both hands on the sill, munched his thoughts.

"There's his tops'ls," said he, nodding east to where far across the waters a glimmer as of an iceberg hung in the dawn. "Take the glass and have a peep at her."

Mists still swathed the waters. Through them the sun peered ghostly, twinkling on the intripping tide beyond the shingle-bank.

And—there again! far away, poised between sky and sea, that glimmer of pearls.

It was some tall ship standing across the bay, the sun making glory on her royals.

"Make her out?"

"Yes, sir. She's a frigate right enough—can't be anything else with that height of canvas."

For in those dark days there was little business on the narrow seas other than the business of war. For weeks together the Channel waters were virgin of merchant-men. Trading bottoms dared not venture. Majestic three-deckers and tall frigates paced the seas alone. Anon a privateer swooped. Then a black smuggler scuttled from shore to shore between twilights. Rarely a vast convoy, herded like sheep, drove by, the dogs of war barking at the laggards. For the rest naked waters, ship-forsaken.

"It's the Medusa" said the Parson deliberately. "How soon'll she be off here, think you, sailor-boy?"

"I hardly know, sir. With this breeze I should think she might be abreast of us in two hours, and round the Head in four."

"And into the trap in five," mused the Parson.

"And Nelson bandaged, his back to the wall, facing a French firing party—all at about six o'clock of a sweet summer evening, August 22nd, the year of Our Lord, 1805."

He began to whistle meditatively.

The fine head, a-ripple with curls, was outlined against the sky. The face was keener than a few days back; the jolly laughing look was there no more. The blue eyes were touched to steel; and nose and jowl thrust forth with ominous grimness. It was the face of the determined fighter, hard-set and terrible.

He leaned out into the morning, whistling quietly, as fair a mark as any sharp-shooter on the knoll might wish, so Kit suddenly recalled, and plucked at him.

The other's arm was iron against him. The Parson made no move, seeming neither to feel, nor understand. A man of marble, he dwelt in the mind; brooding on that glimmer of pearls in the east.

Yet after a minute, as though the message had taken just that time to reach his remote brain, he answered the boy's thought.

"That's all right, Kit," he said, deliberate as in a dream. "The
Gentleman has changed his dispositions. He's withdrawn from the knoll.
Where the Gang are I don't know, but he has got the main of his
Grenadiers on the landside still."

Kit peeped out of the Downs-ward window.

The old picquet on the plain, the old cordon of pacing Grenadiers, the old camp-fire with the drifting smoke and arms piled beside it; and further North, from beneath a thorn, the flash of a bayonet told of an outlying sentry posted there to watch for the relieving force no doubt.

Sick at heart, the lad turned and looked out over the Parson's shoulder.

On his right front humped the knoll, an islet set in a sea of turf, now only tenanted by dark sycamores, ruffling it in the dawn-wind.

Beneath him the greensward ran away to the shingle-bank. Beyond the crest of it, the mast of the lugger pricked up black against the sparkling water.

There was neither stir nor sound, save for the ripple of the tide, and overhead the eternal chirp of the sparrows, careless that history was being made about them.

All was still, all deserted.

As he looked, the lad's mind flamed to a thought.

"I say!" he whispered, clutching the Parson's arm. "What about the lugger?"

"Well! what about the lugger?"

"Rush her now! Here's our chance!"

The Parson turned calm eyes upon the other's splendid ones.

"Aye, lad, aye," he said, with the crushing calm a man wields so mightily. "But give the Gentleman his due, he's not quite such a fool as you'd make him out. He knows our aim as well as he knows his own. We've got to get to Nelson. There's only one way left—the lugger. If he's left that way open it's as plain as the nose on your face it's because he wants us to take it."

Ugh, these men! the boy worshipped the man's courage and scorned his caution. He throbbed for the relief of action. Only let him be doing! anything, anything in the world was better than standing here to watch Nelson sweep doom-wards.

"And suppose," he flashed, "suppose the Gentleman makes away in his lugger now! what shall we do? Twiddle our thumbs and whistle, till the soldiers come, I suppose! And then," with the crude irony of fifteen, "then perhaps, if we're very brave, and the Gentleman has got well away to sea, we'll take a little stroll with a strong escort to the top of Beachy Head to see Nelson strung up to his own yard-arm!"

The boy's fiery insults left the other cold.

"You're young, my boy, offensively young," he said. "A bad fault, but one you may hope to grow out of. One thing I'm sure of. You do your friend a great injustice. He won't leave that despatch-bag in our hands till he's forced to at the point of the steel."

"But what can we do?" blazed the boy—"do, do, do! There's Nelson!" with flashing forefinger. "Here are we. He won't come to us. We must get to him. There's only one way—the lugger. It may be a poor chance, still if it's the only one! O, sir, sir! surely it's better to die attempting something, than stand and rot to death here!"

The words poured forth in a white-hot torrent, shaking him.

Anybody in the world but the practical Englishman would have been moved.

He only grunted.

"I wish I knew what was going on behind that shingle-bank," he grumbled, half to himself.

The boy's soul quenched, only to flame forth again.

"I'll be your eyes, sir!"

The Parson shook a dubious head.

"Oh let me! O do! sir! sir!"

He was hopping, trembling at the other's side.

The Parson with his slow and chewing mind was digesting the situation.

Beneath his calm, he was mad to know what was going on behind the shingle-bank. If he went himself, who would be left in garrison?—the old story.

Yet if he sent Kit?

Twice already he had let the boy go forth alone, and each time had barely plucked him from the jaws of death. Could he send him forth a third time to face what God should send?

Could he?

He locked his jaws.

Duty, duty, duty! a hard mistress for those who serve her, but the only one for an Englishman.

His mind made up, true man that he was, he wasted no time in excusing himself to himself or to others.

Somewhat grey about the jaws, he swung about.

"Very well," shortly. "Just a peep—no more, mind!"