his starboard eye, and he sails and steers all the better for it. Let
them go up to the stable, Darling, while you come down to the beach with
me. I want to show you something."

"What crotchet is in his too active brain now?" the elder and stronger
man asked himself, as he found himself hooked by the right arm, and led
down a track through the trees scarcely known to himself, and quite
out of sight from the village. "Why, this is not the way to the beach!
However, it is never any good to oppose him. He gets his own way so
because of his fame. Or perhaps that's the way he got his fame. But to
show me about over my own land! But let him go on, let him go on."

"You are wondering, I dare say, what I am about," cried Nelson, stopping
suddenly, and fixing his sound eye--which was wonderfully keen, though
he was always in a fright about it--upon the large and peaceful blinkers
of his ancient commander; "but now I shall be able to convince you,
though I am not a land-surveyor, nor even a general of land-forces. If
God Almighty prolongs my life--which is not very likely--it will be that
I may meet that scoundrel, Napoleon Bonaparte, on dry land. I hear
that he is eager to encounter me on the waves, himself commanding a
line-of-battle ship. I should send him to the devil in a quarter of an
hour. And ashore I could astonish him, I think, a little, if I had a
good army to back me up. Remember what I did at Bastia, in the land that
produced this monster, and where I was called the Brigadier; and again,
upon the coast of Italy, I showed that I understood all their dry-ground
business. Tush! I can beat him, ashore and afloat; and I shall, if I
live long enough. But this time the villain is in earnest, I believe,
with his trumpery invasion; and as soon as he hears that I am gone,
he will make sure of having his own way. We know, of course, there are
fifty men as good as myself to stop him, including you, my dear Darling;