CHAPTER XVI.
FAREWELL TO ALBION! Shortly after noon next day, the wind still holding from the N.N.W., though gradually falling light, the _Vesuvius_ dropped anchor off Spithead, and Captain Crang at once ordered a boat's crew to convey the captives ashore.
The Major waved farewell to them from the deck.

Though once again approached by Mr.Sturge, he had repelled all persuasions.

In his breast there welled up an increasing bitterness against his fate, but on the point of dignity he could not be shaken.

He would, on the first fit occasion, have Captain Crang's blood; but he was obdurate, though it cost him liberty for a while and compelled him to disgusting hardship, to stand on the strictest terms of quarrel.
He turned to find the boatswain at his elbow, eyeing him with sympathy and even a touch of respect.
"You done well," said Mr.Jope.

"You don't look it, but you done well, and I'll see you don't get put upon." The _Vesuvius's_ destination, as the Major learnt, was to join a squadron watching the Gallo-Batavian flotilla off the ports of Boulogne, Ambleteuse and Calais; and the occasion of her dropping anchor off Portsmouth on the way was a special and somewhat singular one; yet no more singular than the crisis with which Great Britain had then to cope.
Behind the sandhills from Ostend around to Etaples lay a French army of 130,000 men, ready to invade us if for a few hours it could catch our fleets napping.