It was not very long before the eleven sail of the line with their attendant frigates were swelling large, bristling, and close to the Aurora, at whose signal halliards stood two sailors who dipped to such battle-ships as the schooner passed receiving the acknowledgment of small ensigns gaff-ended, and then hauled down to be hoisted no more. The picture was full of a grandeur that borrowed majesty from the sense of the power and the empire[Pg 397] the ships symbolised. They were lordly in slow motion; they bowed to the swell as though in lofty homage to their mistress the sea; they were terrible in triple rows of cannon and by virtue of the traditional magnificent spirit, silent and concealed behind their lofty and invincible defences. It was the breakfast hour, but the people aboard the Aurora were very willing to wait to break their fast. Not a man but was fascinated by the sight and presence of that tall, majestic ship out there, with the little flag at the fore. For Nelson—the Nelson of the North, of Aboukir Bay, of Teneriffe, of St Vincent, the Nelson of a hundred wounds, the first of all sea chieftains in the history of the world, Nelson, the truest sailor, the kindest shipmate, the man of the purest and loftiest spirit of chivalry and patriotism that ever stepped the planks of a ship's decks—this great, this sublime hero, to be even greater and sublimer in his victorious and immortal death a few months later—Nelson was in her!,
For Billy, who knew and understood so well the sweeping wilderness of silence and mysteries, this swamp held a dread which, try as he might, he could not analyze. On one other occasion had he striven to penetrate it, but as if the bogland recognized in him a force not easily set aside, it had enwrapped him with its deadly mists which chilled and weakened, torn his flesh with its razor-edged grass and sucked at his feet with its oozy, dragging quicksands. He had turned back in time. For two weeks following his exploit he had lain ill with ague, shivering miserably, silent, but thinking.,
"Is that why people don't go near your place, 'cause they're scared of the dogs?" Billy asked..
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