When we parted they stood upon the beach, giving us three cheers and calling out, “_God bless the King!_” We saw them a little after setting out upon their forlorn hope and helping one another over hideous tracts of rocks; but considering the difficulties attending this only mode of travelling left them, for the woods are impenetrable, from their thickness, and the deep swamps everywhere met within them, and considering, too, that the coast is here rendered inhospitable by the heavy seas that are constantly tumbling upon it, it is probable that they all experienced a miserable fate. The picture of the four marines as they waved their caps and shouted that immortal huzza is apt to suggest the wreck of the _Birkenhead_ troop-ship in 1852, when she struck a rock off the Cape of Good Hope and four hundred British soldiers and marines perished. With the ship foundering beneath their feet, they fell in and stood as though on parade, while the women and children were put into the two available boats. As the decks of the _Birkenhead_ lurched under the sea, the ranks of the four hundred British soldiers and marines were still splendid and unbroken. The deed rang through England like a trumpet-call, as well it might. Brothers in arms and kinsmen in spirit were these four hundred men of England’s thin, red line to the four humble privates of the Royal Marines whose names are forgotten. And Kipling’s tribute may be said to include them also: To take your chance in the thick of a rush, with firing all about, Is nothing so bad when you’ve cover to ’and, an’ leave an’ likin’ to shout; But to stand an’ be still to the _Birken’ead_ drill is a damn tough billet to chew, An’ they done it, the Jollies--’Er Majesty’s Jollies--soldier an’ sailor too. The wretched voyage of the _Wager’s_ barge was so delayed by head winds and battering seas and the necessity of landing often in search of food that all hope of reaching a Spanish port was relinquished, and finally they put about and trailed wearily back to the island and the wreck of the _Wager_ after two months of futile endeavor. The superstition of the sea perturbed these childish sailormen, who laid their distresses to the fact that one of the crew who was murdered on the island had never been given burial. Therefore the first errand when they tottered ashore at their old camp was to dig a grave and say a prayer.