circumstance may without reproach be equally discreet.
    Though after parleyings between Government and the ringleaders, and
concessions by the former as to some glaring abuses, the first uprising - that
at Spithead - with difficulty was put down, or matters for a time pacified; yet
at the Nore the unforeseen renewal of insurrection on a yet larger scale, and
emphasised in the conferences that ensued by demands deemed by the authorities
not only inadmissible but aggressively insolent, indicated, if the red flag did
not sufficiently do so, what was the spirit animating the men. Final
suppression, however, there was; but only made possible perhaps by the
unswerving loyalty of the marine corps, and a voluntary resumption of loyalty
among influential sections of the crews. To some extent the Nore Mutiny may be
regarded as analogous to the distempering irruption of contagious fever in a
frame constitutionally sound, and which anon throws it off.
    At all events, among these thousands of mutineers were some of the tars who
not so very long afterwards - whether wholly prompted thereto by patriotism, or
pugnacious instinct, or by both - helped to win a coronet for Nelson at the
Nile, and the naval crown of crowns for him at Trafalgar. To the mutineers those
battles, and especially Trafalgar, were a plenary absolution, and a grand one;
for that which goes to make up scenic naval display is heroic magnificence in
arms. Those battles, especially Trafalgar, stand unmatched in human annals.
 

                                       IV

            Concerning »The greatest sailor since the world began.« -
                                                                       Tennyson.
 
In this matter of writing, resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some
by-paths have an enticement not readily to be withstood. Beckoned by the genius
of Nelson I am going to err into such a by-path. If the reader will keep me
company I shall be glad. At the least we can promise ourselves that pleasure
which is wickedly said to be in sinning, for a literary sin the divergence will
be.
    Very likely it is no new remark that the inventions of our time have at last
brought about a change in sea warfare in degree corresponding to the revolution
in all warfare effected by the original introduction from China into Europe of
gunpowder. The first European firearm, a clumsy contrivance, was, as is well
known, scouted by no few of the knights as a base implement, good enough
peradventure for weavers too craven to stand up crossing steel with steel in
frank fight. But as ashore knightly valour, though shorn of its blazonry, did
not cease with the knights, neither on the seas, though nowadays in encounters
there a certain kind