But no mercy was to be expected of King, Government, or country, inflamed with rage at a French success, and all efforts, whether at Court or in Parliament, were fruitless. The execution was fixed for March 14, and Byng's demeanour thenceforward was equally unaffected and undaunted. He met his death with a calmness of demeanour and a fortitude of spirit that proved him to be no coward of that ignoble type which fears pain or dissolution as the greatest and most awful of evils. His personal friends were solicitous to avoid anything that might give him unnecessary pain, and one of them, a few days before the end, inventing a pitiful ruse, said to him, "Which of us is tallest?" "Why this ceremony?" asked the Admiral. "I know well what it means; let the man come and measure me for my coffin." At the appointed hour of noon he walked forth of his cabin with a firm step, and gazed calmly upon the waters of Portsmouth Harbour, alive with boats full of people who had come to see a fellow-creature die. He refused at first to allow his face to be covered, lest he might be suspected of fear, but upon some officers around him representing that his looks might confuse the soldiers of the firing-party and distract their aim, he agreed to be blindfolded; and thus, kneeling upon the deck, and holding a handkerchief in his hand, he awaited the final disposition of the firing-party that was to send him out of the world by the aid of powder and ball, discharged at the range of half-a-dozen paces. At the pre-arranged signal of his dropping the handkerchief, the soldiers fired, and the scapegoat fell dead, his breast riddled with a dozen bullets. The execution of Byng was (to adopt Fouché's comment upon the murder of the Duc d'Enghien) worse than a crime; it was a blunder. The ministry fell, and the populace, who had before his death regarded Byng with a consuming hatred, now looked upon him as a martyr. The cynical Voltaire, who had unavailingly exerted himself to save the condemned man (and had thereby demonstrated that your cynic is at most but superficially currish), resumed his cynicism in that mordant passage of "Candide" which will never die so long as the history of the British Fleet is read: "_Dans ce pays-ci_," he wrote, "_il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un Amiral pour encourager les autres!_" [Illustration: THE SHOOTING OF ADMIRAL BYNG.] VII One of the earliest records we have of Portsmouth Road travellers is that which relates to three sixteenth-century inspectors of ordnance: "July 20th, 1532--Paid to X pofer Morys, gonner, Cornelys Johnson, the Maister Smythe, and Henry Johnson for their costs in ryding to Portismouthe to viewe the King's ordenaunce there, by the space of X dayes at Xs' the daye--V li." [Sidenote: _MONMOUTH_]