But three of His Majesty's training-brigs had arrived,
bringing their gigs and long-boats, and sailing cutters, with the
racing-shells in which the oarsmen of Dock were to do battle with our
champions of Troy, and a couple of crews of the famous Saltash
fishwomen who annually gave us an exhibition race for a purse of gold
and in the evening danced quadrilles and country reels on the
quarter-deck with His Majesty's officers.
The town, on its part, had made all due and zealous preparations; and
at eight o'clock in the morning, when the Major stepped out of the
hospital for a look at the weather (which was hazy but warm, with
promise of a cloudless noon), already the streets breathed festival.
Sir Felix's coppices had been thinned as usual for the occasion, and
scores of small saplings, larch and beech and hazel, lined the narrow
streets, their sharpened stems planted between the cobbles, their
leafy tops braced back against the house-fronts and stayed with ropes
which, leading through the upper windows, were made fast within to
bars of grates, table-legs and bed-posts. Over them, from house to
house, strings of flags waved in the light morning breeze, and over
these again the air was jocund with the distant tunding of a drum and
the voices of flute and clarionet calling men to mirth in the Town
Square.
The Major gave a glance up and down the street and retired indoors to
prepare his breakfast, for he was alone.
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