For one moment I see ROSSHER. I remind him that he promised to land me. "Did I?" he says, with an air of quiet astonishment which is most provoking. "Well, I don't know how I'm going to do it. We'll see--after the QUEEN has gone." I catch at a first chance, and say, cajolingly, as if suggesting a plan that he could have adopted long ago if he had only thought of it--"Couldn't you send us off in a launch or the tender?" I had ascertained the existence of these two boats in attendance, "After the fireworks?" ROSSHER looks at me, thunderstruck. He simply says, "Impossible!" and turns on his heel. The fact is, when you get out to sea on board a great ship, the visitor is in the power of the owners of the vessel, who have settled all their arrangements for the comfort and amusement of two hundred-and-fifty persons, and if a proposition is made which will interfere with these laws of nautical Medes and Persians in the smallest degree, it is like suggesting the slightest possible alteration, _pro tem._, in the solar system. No help for it. I make up my mind philosophically. If they can't put me on shore, they can't. It's a serious matter, it's the loss of thousands, it's misery for a year, perhaps, it's ruin to a family, but----I shall see the fireworks and illuminations, and have a cruise to Cherbourg, where I don't particularly wish to go. In the meantime let us look at the Review. I am temporarily resigned. _The Review._--Which are the War-vessels? Where is the QUEEN? How silent it all is. The yards are manned everywhere. Very pretty. Firing and smoke in distance, hardly any noise, and though there must be cheering somewhere, yet the wind blows it away from us and we hear scarcely a sound. Dull. Through the glass we see the QUEEN'S Yacht passing along: then as the ship swings round we turn and turn, and everybody gets more or less of a stiff neck. The Band stands ready to play "_God Save the Queen_," but two hours elapse, and HER MAJESTY is nowhere near us, and never will be; most of the Band are fast asleep, the violoncello, having gone off first, is nodding over his instrument. The ladies yearn for five o'clock tea, and gradually disappear to get it. The party watching the QUEEN dissolves.