interest in the story told by the
home-coming sailors, that the great event which had brought them to the
Vier Marchi was, for the moment, almost neglected.

Presently, however, a cannon-shot, then another, and another, roused
the people to remembrance. The funeral cortege of Admiral Prince Philip
d'Avranche was about to leave the Cohue Royale, and every eye was turned
to the marines and sailors lining the road from the court-house to the
church.

The Isle of Jersey, ever stubbornly loyal to its own--even those whom
the outside world contemned or cast aside--jealous of its dignity
even with the dead, had come to bury Philip d'Avranche with all good
ceremony. There had been abatements to his honour, but he had been a
strong man and he had done strong things, and he was a Jerseyman born, a
Norman of the Normans. The Royal Court had judged between him and Guida,
doing tardy justice to her, but of him they had ever been proud; and
where conscience condemned here, vanity commended there. In any event
they reserved the right, independent of all non-Jersiais, to do what
they chose with their dead.

For what Philip had been as an admiral they would do his body reverence
now; for what he had done as a man, that belonged to another tribunal.
It had been proposed by the Admiral of the station to bury him from his
old ship, the Imperturbable, but the Royal Court made its claim, and so
his body had lain in state in the Cohue Royale. The Admiral joined hands
with the island authorities. In both cases it was a dogged loyalty.
The sailors of England knew Philip d'Avranche as a fighter, even as the
Royal Court knew him as a famous and dominant Jerseyman. A battle-ship
is a world of its own, and Jersey is a world of its own. They neither
knew nor cared for the comment of the world without; or, knowing,
refused to consider it.

When the body of Philip was carried from the Cohue Royale signals were
made to the Imperturbable in the tide-way. From all her ships in company
forty guns were fired funeral-wise and the flags were struck halfmast.

Slowly the cortege uncoiled itself to one long unbroken line from the
steps of the Cohue Royale to the porch of the church. The Jurats in
their red robes, the officers, sailors, and marines, added colour to the
pageant. The coffin was covered by the flag of Jersey with the arms of
William the Conqueror in the canton. Of the crowd some were curious,
some stoical; some wept, some essayed philosophy.