Another of our fellow-passengers was an American gentleman, who in Europe had been qualifying himself to come out as an opera tenor. He was coy of giving us a specimen of his talent, till one night we persuaded him to begin _Ah, che la morte!_ But at once the officer of the watch stepped up to silence him, explaining that his singing might drown the sound of fog-horns. The vocalist was much offended at his organ being coupled with a fog-horn; and I fear I gave him fresh offence by suggesting “Signor Fogorno” as a suitable _nom de guerre_, when he consulted me as to Italianising his rather commonplace patronymic. But that careful officer was right, if the story be true that a German liner ran ashore on the back of the Island because her own brass band deafened her to the warning note that surely should have drowned all sweeter sounds. And if our insulted tenor had known it, this artificial organ has a very old theatrical connection, for _persona_ seems the earliest form of such a sounding contrivance, originally a megaphonic mouthpiece fitted to a mask which, as one of the classical stage properties, came to denote the personage thus represented; and in time the name gained respectability as the person or parson of a parish, who more or less loudly warned his convoy of souls from the rocks and shoals of ill-doing. A different kind of signal would be keenly watched for in days when the storm of Napoleon’s invasion was expected to burst upon our shores; and on all prominent points beacons were kept ready to spread the alarm of the enemy’s approach. The Isle of Wight was fully on the alert, remembering how often it had been a vulnerable point in mail-clad wars with France, though one would think that the bugbear, Boney, knew his business too well to seek a difficult landing in an island, beyond which he would be brought up by a dangerous channel, a strong arsenal, and a naval rendezvous. It is said that the signalman at St Catherine’s, probably having drunk the king’s health too freely in smuggled spirits, mistook some fishing-boats for a French fleet, and lighted his beacon to set men mustering in arms and women and children flying for refuge to Newport. Sir Walter Scott tells us how the same sort of blunder stirred a great part of Scotland. But on one side of the Island the scare did not spread far, since the watcher at Freshwater very sensibly reasoned that the wind then blowing would keep this coast clear of hostile ships, and forbore to pass on the alarm.