Sergeant Verity and the Blood Royal Read Online Free Page A

full tide, placid as an inland lake, the waters of the English Channel glittered like copper tinsel in the dying summer day. The storm clouds, gunpowder grey, which had hung over the Western Approaches earlier in the afternoon, had passed overhead harmlessly and had now almost vanished beyond the Dartmoor slopes.
    Packed closely on Plymouth Hoe and on the high ground of the Citadel, a crown of men and women murmured as though in long expectation. Just out to sea, beyond the breakwater, the ships of the Channel Squadron lay at anchor in two lines. The wooden hulls, with their rows of square ports on the gun decks, their black shapes topped by acid-yellow and by the creamy-grey billows of their sails, were indistinguishable at this distance from the ships which had sailed with Nelson to Trafalgar, or with Lord Howe on the Glorious First of June. The setting sun was behind their sails, suffusing them with a reddish gold, concealing the short squat funnels which rose by the mainmast and indicated the new power of Her Majesty's fleet.
    The crowd was made up of grave-looking men in long-tailed coats and tall hats; women in broad crinolined silks and triple flounces, the patterned stripes running vertically down the dresses, since Paris had decreed that horizontal bands were now irrevocably out of fashion. There was a score of red-coated and gold-braided gunners from the Horse Artillery battery at Mount Edgecumbe, gaping lantern-jawed at the scene with their tunics unbuttoned. The gunners were vastly outnumbered by the parties of sailors in their dark broad-brimmed hats, the royal blue of their short jackets, and their white breeches. Bearded and sun-freckled, they watched the pageant before them with professional curiosity. At a trestle table set down on the grass of the Hoe, a row of frock-coated and bare-headed men with papers before them waited philosophically. These were the reporters of the London dailies whose accounts would be telegraphed within the hour for the next edition of The Times, the Globe, or the Morning Post.
    It was a little after seven o'clock when the murmuring in the crowd rose in intensity and a flurry of hands pointed and gestured. Rounding Great Mew from the east was a paddle-steamer, a trim little vessel with its dark hull and white paddle-boxes, its two buff funnels. In the stillness of the evening and the quiescent sea, the rhythm of its wheels carried as an audible pat-pat-pat to the watchers on the Hoe. Two flags flew from its mastheads. One was the White Ensign with the Cross of St George boldly marked. The other, recognized with a cheer by the onlookers, was the Royal Standard of England, the gold lions on their scarlet ground streaming bravely in the evening light.
    Conversation on the Hoe was obliterated by the sudden outburst of a Royal Marine band.
Come, cheer up, my lads,
'tis to glory we steer,
To add something new to this wonderful year . . .
    This in turn was submerged in the booming of royal salutes from rival batteries, like so many clocks striking the hour in competition. The battery of the Citadel set off first, in reverberating billows of white smoke, then the Horse Artillery guns of Mount Edgecumbe. But most splendid of all were the salutes of HMS Hero, accompanied by the Ariadne, St George and Emerald. Beflagged and dressed overall, their cannon smoke rolled from one gun-port after another with successive precision. At the same time there was a well-drilled movement in the rigging. The crews who had manned the ships' yards brandished their hats and roared three cheers for the Victoria and Albert, as the royal yacht dropped anchor in the Sound after her voyage from Osborne.
    An ornamental barge, rowed by sailors of the fleet, pulled out of the inner harbour and began to negotiate the armada of little yachts and pleasure vessels which filled the Sound. It drew alongside the gleaming black hull of the royal yacht and a file of senior military and naval commanders was helped over the paddle