Napoleon arrived at Boulogne on the 3rd of August,
and reviewed his troops, in a line on the beach some eight miles long.
A finer sight he had never seen, and he wrote in his pride: "The English
know not what is hanging over their ears. If we are masters of the
passage for twelve hours, England is conquered." But all depended on
Villeneuve, and happily he could not depend upon his nerves.
Meanwhile the young man who was charged with a message which he would
gladly have died to discharge was far away, eating out his heart in
silence, or vainly relieving it with unknown words. At the last gasp, or
after he ceased to gasp for the time, and was drifting insensible, but
happily with his honest face still upward, a Dutchman, keeping a sharp
lookout for English cruisers, espied him. He was taken on board of a
fine bark bound from Rotterdam for Java, with orders to choose the track
least infested by that ravenous shark Britannia. Scudamore was treated
with the warmest kindness and the most gentle attention, for the
captain's wife was on board, and her tender heart was moved with
compassion. Yet even so, three days passed by with no more knowledge
of time on his part than the face of a clock has of its hands; and more
than a week was gone before both body and mind were in tone and tune
again. By that time the stout Dutch bark, having given a wide berth
to the wakes of war, was forty leagues west of Cape Finisterre, under
orders to touch no land short of the Cape, except for fresh water at St.
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