High time for them to come and
lay the cloth. I am as hungry as a hunter."
CHAPTER XLVI
CATAMARANS
Napoleon had shown no proper dread of the valiant British volunteers,
but kept his festival in August, and carried on his sea-side plans, as
if there were no such fellows. Not content with that, he even flouted
our blockading fleet by coming out to look at them. And if one of our
frigates had shot straight, she might have saved millions of lives and
billions of money, at the cost of one greatly bad life. 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.
Pages:
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475