it would be difficult to dislodge them. It must all be done from the

land side then, for even a 42-gun frigate could scarcely come near

enough to pepper them. They love shoal water, the skulks--and that has

enabled them to baffle me so often. Not that they would conquer the

country--all brag--but still it would be a nasty predicament, and scare

the poor cockneys like the very devil."

"But remember the distance from Boulogne, Hurry. If they cannot cross

twenty-five miles of channel in the teeth of our ships, what chance

would they have when the distance is nearer eighty?"

"A much better chance, if they knew how to do it. All our cruisers would

be to the eastward. One afternoon perhaps, when a haze is on, they make

a feint with light craft toward the Scheldt--every British ship crowds

sail after them. Then, at dusk, the main body of the expedition slips

with the first of the ebb to the westward; they meet the flood tide in

mid-channel, and using their long sweeps are in Springhaven, or at any

rate the lightest of them, by the top of that tide, just when you

are shaving. You laugh at such a thought of mine. I tell you, my dear

friend, that with skill and good luck it is easy; and do it they should,

if they were under my command."

If anybody else had even talked of such a plan as within the bounds of

likelihood, Admiral Darling would have been almost enraged. But now he

looked doubtfully, first at the sea (as if it might be thick with prames

already), and then at the land--which was his own--as if the rent might

go into a Frenchman's pocket, and then at his old and admired friend,

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