"Suddenly a figure came slowly down from before the rest, with his hands behind his back, and his head a little drooped. The officer at once lowered the telescope and held it to him, stepping upward, as if to leave him alone--what dress he had on I scarce noticed; but there he was standing, single, in the round bright field of the glass I had hold of like a vice--his head raised, his hands hiding his face, as he kept the telescope fixed fair in front of me--only I saw the smooth, broad round of his chin. I knew, as if I'd seen him in the Tuileries at Paris, or known him by sight since I was a boy--I _knew_ it was Napoleon! "During that minute the rest of them were out of sight, so far as the glass went--you'd have supposed there was no one there but himself, as still as a figure in iron, watching the same thing, no doubt, as I'd done myself five minutes before, where the noble seventy-four was beating slowly to windward. When I _did_ glance to the knot of officers twenty yards back, 'twas as if one saw a ring of his generals waiting respectfully while he eyed some field of battle or other, with his army at the back of the hill; but next moment the telescope fell in his hands, and his face, as pale as death, with his lip firm under it, seemed near enough for me to touch it--his eyes shot stern into me from below his wide white forehead, and I started, dropping my glass in turn. That instant the whole wild lump of St Helena, with its ragged brim, the clear blue sky and the sea, swung round about the dwindled figures above the crag, till they were nothing but so many people together against the slope beyond. "'Twas a strange scene to witness, let me tell you; never can I forget the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of his, after the telescope sank from his eye, when the _Conqueror_ must have shot back with all her stately hamper into the floor of the Atlantic again!