. But the poor
ship knew not her opportunity, or she would rather have gone to the
bottom than waste it.

Now the French made much of this affair, according to their nature; and
histories of it, full of life and growth, ran swiftly along the
shallow shore, and even to Paris, the navel of the earth. Frenchmen of
letters--or rather of papers--declared that all England was smitten with
dismay; and so she might have been, if she had heard of it. But as our
neighbours went home again, as soon as the water was six fathoms
deep, few Englishmen knew that they had tried to smell a little of the
sea-breeze, outside the smell of their inshore powder. They were pleased
to get ashore again, and talk it over, with vivid description of the
things that did not happen.

"Such scenes as these tended much to agitate England," writes a great
French historian. "The British Press, arrogant and calumnious, as the
Press always is in a free country, railed much at Napoleon and his
preparations; but railed as one who trembles at that which he would fain
exhibit as the object of his laughter." It may have been so, but it is
not to be seen in any serious journal of that time. He seems to have
confounded coarse caricaturists with refined and thoughtful journalists,
even as, in the account of that inshore skirmish, he turns a gun-brig
into a British frigate. However, such matters are too large for us.

It was resolved at any rate to try some sort of a hit at all these
very gallant Frenchmen, moored under their own batteries, and making
horse-marines of themselves, whenever Neptune, the father of the horse,
permitted. The jolly English tars, riding well upon the waves, sent many
a broad grin through a spy-glass at Muncher Crappo tugging hard to get
his nag into his gun-boat and then to get him out again, because his
present set of shoes would not be worn out in England. Every sailor
loves a horse, regarding him as a boat on legs, and therefore knowing
more about him than any landlubber may feign to know.

But although they would have been loth to train a gun on the noble
animal, who was duly kept beyond their range, all the British sailors
longed to have a bout with the double tier of hostile craft moored
off the shore within shelter of French batteries. Every day they could
reckon at least two hundred sail of every kind of rig invented since
the time of Noah, but all prepared to destroy instead of succouring the
godly. It was truly grievous to s