The day was Sunday, and the Queen resolved upon attending chapel as usual. Lord Hervey thought her weak in determining to sit up to be stared at. He had no idea that a higher motive might influence a wife in dread uncertainty as to the fate of her husband. Caroline, it is true, was not influenced by any such high motive. She simply did not wish that people should conclude, from her absence, that the Sovereign had perished; and she would neglect no duty belonging to her position till she was relieved from it by law. She accordingly appeared at chapel as usual; and in the very midst of the service a letter was delivered to her from the King, in which the much-vexed monarch told her how he had set sail, how the fleet had been scattered, how he had been driven back to Helvoetsluys after beating about for some twenty hours, and how it was all the fault of Sir Charles Wager, who had hurried him on board, on assurance of wind and tide being favourable, and of there being no time to be lost. The joy of Caroline was honest and unfeigned. She declared that her heart had been heavier that day than ever it had been before; that she was still, indeed, anxious touching the fate of one whose life was so precious, not merely to his family, but to all Europe; and that, but for the impatience and indiscretion of Sir Charles Wager, the past great peril would never have been incurred. The admiral was entirely blameless. The King had deliberately misrepresented the circumstances. It was the royal impatience which had caused all the subsequent peril. The Sovereign, weary of waiting for a wind, declared that if the admiral would not sail, he would go over in a packet-boat. Sir Charles maintained he could not. ‘Be the weather what it may,’ said the King, ‘I am not afraid.’ ‘_I am_,’ was the laconic remark of the seaman. George remarked that he ‘wanted to see a storm, and would sooner be twelve hours in one than be shut up for twenty-four hours more at Helvoetsluys.’ ‘Twelve hours in a storm!’ cried Sir Charles; ‘four hours would do your business for you.’ The admiral would not sail till the wind was fair; and he remarked to the King that although his Majesty could compel him to go, ‘I,’ said Sir Charles, ‘can make you come back again.’ The storm which arose after they _did_ set sail was most terrific in character, and the escape of the voyagers was of the narrowest. The run back to the Dutch coast was not effected without difficulty. On landing, Sir Charles observed, ‘Sir, you wished to see a storm; how does your Majesty like it?’ ‘So well,’ said the King, ‘that I never wish to see another.’ The admiral remarked, in one of his private letters, giving a description of the event, ‘that his Majesty was at present _as tame_ as any about him;’ ‘an epithet,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘that his Majesty, had he known it, would, I fancy, have liked, next to the storm, the least of anything that happened to him.’