“Anne gained the summit, and followed along the central track over the huge lump of freestone which forms the peninsula, the wide sea prospect extending as she went on.  Weary with her journey, she approached the extreme southerly peak of rock, and gazed from the cliff at Portland Bill, or Beal, as it was in those days more correctly called.

The wild, herbless, weather-worn promontory was quite a solitude, and, saving the one old lighthouse about fifty yards up the slope, scarce a mark was visible to show that humanity had ever been near the spot.  Anne found herself a seat on a stone, and swept with her eyes the tremulous expanse of water around her that seemed to utter a ceaseless unintelligible incantation.  Out of the three hundred and sixty degrees of her complete horizon two hundred and fifty were covered by waves, the coup d’oeil including the area of troubled waters known as the Race, where two seas met to effect the destruction of such vessels as could not be mastered by one.  She counted the craft within her view: there were five; no, there were only four; no, there were seven, some of the specks having resolved themselves into two.  They were all small coasters, and kept well within sight of land.

Anne sank into a reverie.  Then she heard a slight noise on her left hand, and turning beheld an old sailor, who had approached with a glass.  He was levelling it over the sea in a direction to the south-east, and somewhat removed from that in which her own eyes had been wandering.  Anne moved a few steps thitherward, so as to unclose to her view a deeper sweep on that side, and by this discovered a ship of far larger size than any which had yet dotted the main before her.  Its sails were for the most part new and clean, and in comparison with its rapid progress before the wind the small brigs and ketches seemed standing still.  Upon this striking object the old man’s glass was bent.

‘What do you see, sailor?’ she asked.

‘Almost nothing,’ he answered.  ‘My sight is so gone off lately that things, one and all, be but a November mist to me.  And yet I fain would see to-day.  I am looking for the Victory.’

‘Why,’ she said quickly.

‘I have a son aboard her.  He’s one of three from these parts.  There’s the captain, there’s my son Ned, and there’s young Loveday of Overcombe—he that lately joined.’

‘Shall I look for you?’ said Anne, after a pause.

‘Certainly, mis’ess, if so be you please.’

Anne took the glass, and he supported it by his arm.  ‘It is a large ship,’ she said, ‘with three masts, three rows of guns along the side, and all her sails set.’

‘I guessed as much.’

‘There is a little flag in front—over her bowsprit.’

‘The jack.’

‘And there’s a large one flying at her stern.’

‘The ensign.’

‘And a white one on her fore-topmast.’

‘That’s the admiral’s flag, the flag of my Lord Nelson.  What is her figure-head, my dear?’

‘A coat-of-arms, supported on this side by a sailor.’

Her companion nodded with satisfaction.  ‘On the other side of that figure-head is a marine.’

‘She is twisting round in a curious way, and her sails sink in like old cheeks, and she shivers like a leaf upon a tree.’

‘She is in stays, for the larboard tack.  I can see what she’s been doing.  She’s been re’ching close in to avoid the flood tide, as the wind is to the sou’-west, and she’s bound down; but as soon as the ebb made, d’ye see, they made sail to the west’ard.  Captain Hardy may be depended upon for that; he knows every current about here, being a native.’

‘And now I can see the other side; it is a soldier where a sailor was before.  You are sure it is the Victory?’

‘I am sure.’”