Lord Oliphant was among the volunteers who came down with the Prince,
and, as many of the other gentlemen had also been on board during the
first voyage, Cyril felt that he was among friends, and had none of
the feeling of strangeness and isolation he had before experienced.
The party was indeed a merry one. For upwards of a year the fear of
the Plague had weighed on all England. At the time it increased so
terribly in London, that all thought it would, like the Black Death,
spread over England, and that, once again, half the population of the
country might be swept away. Great as the mortality had been, it had
been confined almost entirely to London and some of the great towns,
and now that it had died away even in these, there was great relief
in men's minds, and all felt that they had personally escaped from a
terrible and imminent danger. That they were about to face peril even
greater than that from which they had escaped did not weigh on the
spirits of the gentlemen on board Prince Rupert's ship. To be killed
fighting for their country was an honourable death that none feared,
while there had been, in the minds of even the bravest, a horror of
death by the Plague, with all its ghastly accompaniments. Sailing out
to sea to the Downs, then, they felt that the past year's events lay
behind them as an evil dream, and laughed and jested and sang with
light-hearted mirth.
As yet, the Dutch had not put out from port, and for three weeks the
Fleet cruised off their coast.
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