The approach of the child's death roused the Admiral from his own sickness. The approach of battle or death was always like a trumpet-blast to that commanding spirit, and he was present when the little child died, calmly but convulsively, in the arms of the good woman. For in moments like this My Lady was a woman as good as ever breathed. The Admiral was completely overcome. When we were taking up our station at the Nile, the broadside of the _Aquilon_ crashing into our bows laid a hundred of our men on the deck wounded and dying, but his cheek never turned, as it turned at the passing of this seven-year-old slip of exiled Royalty. All through the 24th from the hour after midnight, and all through the 25th, and all through the long dark hours of the early morning of the 26th, till we were under the lee of the port of Palermo, this tempest raged. It seemed, as Sir William, who palmed himself on his _mots_, observed, as if the fiends of the lightning and tempest were stretching out their hands for those snatched from battle, murder, and sudden death. And the cruelty of it was that for a full four hours before the child died we were in sight of Palermo, lying between Zaffarano and Monte Pellegrino on our larboard hand. But the storm was such that there was no hope of our making the port, which lies as it were in the arm of Pellegrino. There were we, with the King's own child dying of sea-sickness in sight of his island-capital, and the greatest Admiral in all the world powerless to take the ship into the harbour. But in the night the wind changed again, and at 2 a.m. we were safe at anchor within a stone's throw of the Villa of the Marquess de Gregorio, where it was the custom of the old Viceroys to repair on landing. What a contrast to My Lady's heroic energy, mingled with the utmost womanly tenderness, was the behaviour of Sir William in these awful days and nights!--though, indeed, he showed in a high degree the philosophical temperament which had won for him the title of Pliny, much used by My Lady before their marriage.