The old picquet on the plain, the old cordon of pacing Grenadiers, the old camp-fire with the drifting smoke and arms piled beside it; and further North, from beneath a thorn, the flash of a bayonet told of an outlying sentry posted there to watch for the relieving force no doubt. Sick at heart, the lad turned and looked out over the Parson's shoulder. On his right front humped the knoll, an islet set in a sea of turf, now only tenanted by dark sycamores, ruffling it in the dawn-wind. Beneath him the greensward ran away to the shingle-bank. Beyond the crest of it, the mast of the lugger pricked up black against the sparkling water. There was neither stir nor sound, save for the ripple of the tide, and overhead the eternal chirp of the sparrows, careless that history was being made about them. All was still, all deserted. As he looked, the lad's mind flamed to a thought. "I say!" he whispered, clutching the Parson's arm. "What about the lugger?" "Well! what about the lugger?" "Rush her now! Here's our chance!" The Parson turned calm eyes upon the other's splendid ones. "Aye, lad, aye," he said, with the crushing calm a man wields so mightily. "But give the Gentleman his due, he's not quite such a fool as you'd make him out. He knows our aim as well as he knows his own. We've got to get to Nelson. There's only one way left--the lugger. If he's left that way open it's as plain as the nose on your face it's because he wants us to take it." Ugh, these men! the boy worshipped the man's courage and scorned his caution. He throbbed for the relief of action. Only let him be doing! anything, anything in the world was better than standing here to watch Nelson sweep doom-wards. "And suppose," he flashed, "suppose the Gentleman makes away in his lugger now! what shall we do? Twiddle our thumbs and whistle, till the soldiers come, I suppose! And then," with the crude irony of fifteen, "then perhaps, if we're very brave, and the Gentleman has got _well_ away to sea, we'll take a little stroll with a strong escort to the top of Beachy Head to see Nelson strung up to his own yard-arm!" The boy's fiery insults left the other cold. "You're young, my boy, offensively young," he said. "A bad fault, but one you may hope to grow out of. One thing I'm sure of. You do your friend a great injustice. He won't leave that despatch-bag in our hands till he's forced to at the point of the steel." "But what can we _do_?" blazed the boy--"do, do, do! There's Nelson!" with flashing forefinger. "Here are we. He won't come to us. We _must_ get to him. There's only one way--the lugger. It may be a poor chance, still if it's the only one! O, sir, sir! surely it's better to die attempting something, than stand and _rot_ to death here!" The words poured forth in a white-hot torrent, shaking him. Anybody in the world but the practical Englishman would have been moved. He only grunted.