into barracks; so, the Captain, declaring
that his landlady would "haul him over the coals" for stopping out so
late, stumped away chuckling down the parade with his malacca cane.

The exhausted household at "the Moorings" then went to bed in peace,
tired out with their day's doings--tired even of talk--Bob and Nell
composing in their dreams a fresh version, as the old sailor had
humorously suggested, of Sarah's celebrated picnic poem; in which,
instead of their original quatrain, "bed" now rhymed with "head," in
lieu of the unfortunately forgotten "bread," and "curry" with "hurry!"

The next day, both Mr and Mrs Dugald Strong said that they were too
fatigued to do anything else save lie in the sun and bask on the beach;
but the following morning, the Captain, insisting on their seeing the
sights of the place, took them all down to the harbour, when they went
on board the _Victory_, Nelson's old flagship, which Mrs Gilmour said
she had been over "at laste a hundred times before," although she
accompanied them now "for company's sake, sure!"

If a hackneyed theme to her, this visit to the historic vessel was,
however, replete with interest to the others; being full of floating
memories of the past, in which the grand figure of the hero of Trafalgar
stood out in relief with that wonderfully blood-stirring last signal of
his, like a laurel wreath encircling his brows-- "England expects every
man this day to do his duty!"

To Bob and Nellie it was especially delightful to see the real ship in
which Nelson had fought so gallantly that battle of which they had read,
knowing, by heart almost, the principal incidents of the glorious day,
when the British fleet "crumpled up the combined squadrons of France and
Spain"; and, with the able assistance of the Captain, who made an
admirable cicerone, they could, standing there on board the _Victory_,
imagine themselves in the thick of the celebrated sea-fight. Aye,
boarding the _Santissima Trinidada_, with the guns banging about them
and the sulphurous gunpowder-smoke filling the air around, hiding
everything beyond the ponderous hulls of the enemy's three-deckers
between which, yard-arm to yard-arm, the old _Victory_ lay!

"Here it was," said the Captain, pointing out the spot on the quarter-
deck below the poop, close to a hatchway, and marked by a copper plate
let into the planking, bearing a short inscription commemorating the
fact, "that Nelson was standing when that villain