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The utmost that I can promise is, that if we should fall in with a coaster, or other ship, bound up-channel, or should sight a fishing boat, I will delay my voyage just long enough to put ye on board, but not a minute longer. And if so be we do not encounter another craft, you will e'en both have to join us, for we have here no room for idlers.
Not only had English rovers for years past been giving unspeakable trouble on the Spanish Main and the Ocean highways, but the English fleets also practically controlled the narrow seas: and could make it impossible for any ordinary convoys, whether of transports, or merchantmen, or treasure-ships, to pass up-channel.
This steamer would of necessity return to Knollsea that evening, partly because several people from that place had been on board, and also because the Knollsea folk were waiting for groceries and draperies from London: there was not an ounce of tea or a hundredweight of coal in the village, owing to the recent winds, which had detained the provision parcels at Sandbourne, and kept the colliers up-channel until the change of weather this day.
He knew the French were still to the westward of him, but his orders were repeated, and he had to go. Tiding it up-Channel against easterly winds, he reached the Downs and joined the Nore Division there on the 28th. History usually speaks of this false movement as the happy chance which saved the country from invasion. But it was not so.
There I sat down, with my back against a protecting rock, in such a place that I could see up-Channel and yet shelter from the rushing wind. The sky was overcast, and the long wall of rock showed grey with orange-brown patches and a darker line of sea-weed at the base like the under strake of a boat's belly, for the tide was but beginning to make.
Parker's plan was that the two 50's, Bristol and Experiment, and two 28-gun frigates, the Active and the Solebay, should engage the main front; while two frigates of the same class, the Actæon and the Syren, with a 20-gun corvette, the Sphinx, should pass the fort, anchoring to the westward, up-channel, to protect the heavy vessels against fire-ships, as well as to enfilade the principal American battery.
It was produced by the peculiar curves of coast lying east and west of the Beal; these bent southward in two back streams the up-Channel flow on each side of the peninsula, which two streams united outside the Beal, and there met the direct tidal flow, the confluence of the three currents making the surface of the sea at this point to boil like a pot, even in calmest weather.
A new beginner even is not badly off with the wind fresh at south-west, and the Lizard light in plain view on his weather-bow, if he happen to be bound up-channel. That night, consequently, proved to be more comfortable than the previous. Next morning there was no change, except in the brig's position.
Our cruising billet is about 150 miles south-west of the Scillys, at the focal point where trade for Liverpool and Bristol and the up-channel trade diverges. Von Weissman says that this is a plum billet and we should do well. I feel this is going to be better than those piffling little mine-laying trips, and though we shall be away ten days, it will qualify me for four days' leave in Belgium.
"It came on to blow when we fetched soundin's, an' that kept me standin' by the hawsers, lashed to the capstan, breathin' twixt green seas. I near died o' cauld an' hunger, for the Grotkau towed like a barge, an' Bell howkit her along through or over. It was vara thick up-Channel, too.
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