He himself set sail from Portus Itius, which we may take to be
Boulogne, at sunset, that is to say about half-past seven; but he must,
it might seem, have devoted the whole day to getting so many ships out
of harbour. The wind was blowing gently from the south-west, bearing
him, his fortunes and ours. At midnight the second of those small
disasters which met him at every turn upon this expedition fell upon
him. The wind failed. In consequence his great fleet of transports
was helpless, it drifted along with the tide, fortunately then running
up the Straits, but this bore him beyond his landing-place of the year
before, and daybreak found him apparently far to the east of the North
Foreland. What can have been the thoughts of the greatest of men,
helpless in the midst of this treacherous and unknown sea? To every
Roman the sea was bitter, even the tideless Mediterranean, how much
more this furious tide-whipt channel. Caesar cannot but have
remembered how it had half broken him in the previous year. Very
profoundly he must have mistrusted it. But his Gaulish sailors were
doubtless less disturbed; they expected the ebb, and when it came,
every man doing his utmost, the transports were brought as swiftly as
the long ships to that "fair and open" beach where Caesar had landed
in the previous summer, the long beach which Deal and Sandwich hold.
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