Mr. Sturge shrugged his shoulders and walked forward to seek Ben Jope, whom he found by the forecastle hatchway engaged in slicing a quid of black tobacco. "You'll excuse me," he asked, "but that rum little man who calls himself Hymen--where did he escape from?" "Escape!" Ben Jope sprang to his feet, but catching sight of the Major, who had resumed his pensive attitude by the bulwarks, sat down again heavily. "Lord, but you frightened me! That Hymen don't escape; not if I know it. He's the apple of my eye, or becoming so. Now I tell you," said Mr. Jope, beginning to slice again at his tobacco, then pausing to look up with engaging frankness; "you took my fancy terrible for a few minutes; but, come to see you by daylight, you're too pink." Mr. Sturge might have pressed for an explanation; but at this juncture the first lieutenant of H.M.S. _Poseidon_ came forward, still with his painted scowl, and demanded to know, since the _Vesuvius_ could not reach Portsmouth for many hours, when supper would be served, and what bedroom accommodation she provided. CHAPTER XVI. FAREWELL TO ALBION! Shortly after noon next day, the wind still holding from the N.N.W., though gradually falling light, the _Vesuvius_ dropped anchor off Spithead, and Captain Crang at once ordered a boat's crew to convey the captives ashore. The Major waved farewell to them from the deck. Though once again approached by Mr. Sturge, he had repelled all persuasions. In his breast there welled up an increasing bitterness against his fate, but on the point of dignity he could not be shaken. He would, on the first fit occasion, have Captain Crang's blood; but he was obdurate, though it cost him liberty for a while and compelled him to disgusting hardship, to stand on the strictest terms of quarrel. He turned to find the boatswain at his elbow, eyeing him with sympathy and even a touch of respect. "You done well," said Mr. Jope. "You don't look it, but you done well, and I'll see you don't get put upon." The _Vesuvius's_ destination, as the Major learnt, was to join a squadron watching the Gallo-Batavian flotilla off the ports of Boulogne, Ambleteuse and Calais; and the occasion of her dropping anchor off Portsmouth on the way was a special and somewhat singular one; yet no more singular than the crisis with which Great Britain had then to cope. Behind the sandhills from Ostend around to Etaples lay a French army of 130,000 men, ready to invade us if for a few hours it could catch our fleets napping. To transport them Napoleon had collected in the ports of Ostend, Dunkirk, Calais, Ambleteuse, Vimereux, Boulogne and Etaples, 954 transports and 1339 armed vessels--gun-brigs, schooners, luggers, schuyts and prames; and all these light vessels lay snug in their harbours, protected by shoals and sandbanks which our heavier ships of war, by reason of their draught, could not approach.