The Queen showed great joy at hearing everybody cry “The King is safe! the King is safe!” when the courier in his muddy boots arrived, but it was a terrible shock to the partisans of the Prince, and his friends in the City could with difficulty muster up the necessary congratulations. The Queen who had shown an outward calm during the crisis now expressed herself joyously in characteristic terms:-- “_J’ai toujours dit que le Roi n’était pas embarque_;” she exclaimed. “_On a beau voulu m’effraier cet après-diner avec leur letters, et leur sots, gens de Harwich; j’ai continue à lire mon Rollin, et me moquois de tout cela._” This was a hit at Frederick who had brought her the news from Harwich in a letter. Rollin was one of her favourite books. But strange to say the matter by no means ended here. Fine weather came with an easterly wind which was just what the King wanted, and matters looked perfectly settled for his return, but it was not so. Scarcely had this fine spell lasted long enough to allow the King time to embark when the wind veered to the north-west and blew again an awful hurricane, worse if possible than the former one which had caused such grave anxiety at the Court. This was on the 20th of December, 1736, and no doubt whatever was now held that the King had embarked as indeed he had. From the 20th to the 24th there was no news of him at all, but on the latter date tidings arrived which were far from reassuring. A shattered mastless sloop was thrown up on the coast, having on board a party of clerks from the Secretary’s office of the King, and these stated that they had sailed with His Majesty from Helvetsluis on the previous Monday, and that they had remained with the rest of the fleet until the storm arose when the Admiral, Sir Charles Wager, had made the signal for each ship to look after itself. When the passengers of the sloop last saw the Royal Yacht, she was “tacking about” with a view apparently to make an endeavour to return to Helvetsluis. So grave was this news considered, that Sir Robert Walpole prevented the Queen from interviewing these shipwrecked clerks. Once more were the hopes and exultations of the Court Party ruthlessly shattered; once more did the partisans of the Prince with his stout friends in the city rub their hands in dark corners. This time the Queen was thoroughly alarmed, and showed it in her countenance. The next day, Christmas Day, was perhaps the gloomiest in men’s knowledge at that time. On this day, probably in the early morning, four ships of the King’s convoy were thrown up in a mastless condition on the coast, and the only account of the King which they could give, was that about six o’clock on the Monday night, the 20th December, a gun was fired by Sir Charles Wager’s order as a signal for the fleet to separate; a kind of _sauve qui peut_. That the wind continued in its full violence for forty-eight hours after this. One of