The position of the _Victory_ gave plenty of scope for the manoeuvrings of the _Aurora_. Captain Weaver, finding that he would rapidly outsail the liner and be ahead and out of hail before half a dozen sentences could be exchanged, luffed the _Aurora_ to windward of the _Victory_, wisely declining to be becalmed by the big ship's sails if he stationed his little craft to leeward of her. A lieutenant stood at the forward end of the raised deck, or poop as it really was. One or two midshipmen were visible. The sentry on the forecastle was in sight; otherwise scarce a man was to be seen. The lieutenant hailed as the officer in the _Amphion_ had: "Schooner ahoy! Are you fresh from England?" "Direct, sir," answered Captain Weaver. Scarcely had the _Aurora's_ skipper made this answer when there appeared at the side of the lieutenant a figure whose apparition was so sudden that, like Hamlet's ghost in the theatre, he might be thought to have risen from below through an opening in the deck. He wore a cocked hat athwartships. His frock uniform coat seemed somewhat threadbare; amidst the folds of the left breast of his coat were four weather-tarnished and lustreless stars. The right sleeve was empty and was secured to the breast. One eye was protected by a green shade. He looked a little man alongside the lieutenant who himself was not above the average. Collingwood described him as small enough to be drawn through an alderman's thumb ring. At the sight of this immortal figure the Admiral and Captain Acton instantly bared their heads, and the whole of the crew of the _Aurora_, springing into the fore and main shrouds, roared hurrahs in such voices as perhaps only British sailors' throats are capable of delivering. Amidst those shouts of rapturous recognition and impassioned pride, could be heard such exclamations as, "God bless you, Lord Nelson!" "Down with the French, and glory to our Hero!" "Hurrah for the grandest sailor in the world!" Nelson, standing beside his lieutenant, who might have been Pasco (the officer who, on the 21st day of the following October, made the Nelson signal that is as dear as his heart's blood to every Englishman), acknowledged the salutations of the schooner's quarterdeck and the mobs in her rigging by bows and a smile, and a lifting of his hand and certain flapping motions of the stump of his right arm, an action into which he was frequently moved when irritated or pleased. "I should like to know," he exclaimed, and every ear on board the schooner was bent to catch his accents, with the greed with which a crowd of men might be supposed to extend their hands to catch a shower of gold flung amongst them from a height, "if you have seen anything of the French Fleet under Admiral Villeneuve?" "No, my lord," shouted the Admiral, "I am very sorry to say we have not." Nelson's stump wagged with annoyance.