awful jubilation. The shipping is all decked with flags; all the Sunday
clothes have been looked out, and many a yard of new ribbon and pound of
bad powder bought; there have been arrangements for a procession, which
could not be got up; for a speech which nobody would undertake to
pronounce; and, lastly, for a dinner, about which last there was no
hanging back. Yea, also, they have hired from Carcarrow Church-town,
sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music; for Frank has put
down the old choir band at Aberalva,--another of his mistakes,--and
there is but one fiddle and a clarionet now left in all the town. So the
said town waits all the day on tiptoe, ready to worship, till out of the
soft brown haze the stately Waterwitch comes sliding in, like a white
ghost, to fold her wings in Aberalva bay.

And at that sight the town is all astir. Fishermen shake themselves up
out of their mid-day snooze, to admire the beauty, as she slips on and
on through water smooth as glass, her hull hidden by the vast curve of
the balloon-jib, and her broad wings boomed out alow and aloft, till it
seems marvellous how that vast screen does not topple headlong, instead
of floating (as it seems) self-supporting above its image in the mirror.
Women hurry to put on their best bonnets; the sexton toddles up with the
church key in his hand, and the ringers at his heels; the Coastguard
Lieutenant bustles down to the Manby's mortar, which he has hauled out
in readiness on the pebbles. Old Willis hoists a flag before his house,
and half-a-dozen merchant skippers do the same. Bang goes the harmless
mortar, burning the British nation's powder without leave or licence;
and all the rocks and woods catch up the echo, and kick it from cliff to
cliff, playing at football with it till its breath is beaten out; a
rolling fire of old muskets and bird-pieces crackles along the shore,
and in five minutes a poor lad has blown a ramrod through his hand.
Never mind, lords do not visit Penalva every day. Out burst the bells