I was too full of excitement to care to go to bed, and I found most of my fellow-townsmen were of my mind in this matter. I turned in first at Jemima Nicholas’s house to see how she and her niece were getting on after their novel experience of warlike tactics on a large scale. Jemima, an immensely powerful woman, seemed only sorry that they had not come to close quarters with the enemy: she was truly a Celtic Amazon who took a pleasure in fighting for fighting’s sake. Nancy, to my surprise, seemed to have been indulging in the luxury of tears. “What on earth is the matter with you, Nan?” I asked, with unfeeling openness. “Your eyes are quite red.” Nancy shot a glance of anger at me from the orbs in question, but vouchsafed no answer. “Why, don’t you know,” interposed Jemima, “that her young man was wounded in the fight up there just now?” “D’you mean Davy Jones?” I asked. “Oh, I knew one of the sailors got shot; but I didn’t know which it was; I never thought of inquiring.” “You unfeeling young heathen!” burst out Nancy. “But there, it’s no good talking; boys have no more heart than cabbages.” “A cabbage _has_ a heart, Nancy,” I retorted. “Well, so’ve you—much the same sort,” cried Ann, too cross for similes or logic. Very much offended, I got up, but delivered this shaft before I departed: “_All_ those sailors were my friends equally, so it made no odds to me which of them was wounded. And how was I to know Davy Jones was your young man, when it’s my belief you didn’t know it yourself yesterday.” But the door slammed abruptly just behind my more backward leg, and the rest of my remark was cut off. I wended my way into the main street, and soon found the centre of attraction to be the old hostelry, the “Royal Oak.” Men and boys, and many of the gentler sex also, swarmed round its window and its quaint old porch. The interior was filled with officers discussing the position of affairs. With a good deal of trouble and squeezing, and being in those days of an eel-like figure, I slipped and shoved myself close to one of the windows, where, balancing on my hands and with my nose glued to the pane, I inspected all those men of mark, and tried to find out what their intentions might be. This position might, affording as it did ample opportunity for the horse-play of the rude, seem _infra dig._ to those who have only known me in my later years; but it must be remembered I was then but a boy not given to stand on my dignity and strongly moved by curiosity, or perhaps I might call it by the higher title—desire of knowledge.