“But will they not dissolve?” asked one of the crowd.

“And what are they for?” asked Captain Gilbey.

Strange said, “They are made of sand and sea-water and magic, and they will last as long as there is work for them to do. Captain Gilbey, get one of the boats to take a message to the Captain of the False Prelate to say that his men should lash the horses to the ship, as many of them as they can. The horses will pull the ship off the shoal.”

“Oh!” said Captain Gilbey. “Very well. Yes, of course.”

Within half an hour of the message reaching the False Prelate, the ship was clear of the shoal and the sailors were busy putting the sails to rights and doing the thousand and one things which sailors do (things which are quite as mysterious in their way as the actions of magicians). However, it ought to be said that the magic did not work quite as Strange intended. He had not imagined there would be much difficulty in capturing the horses. He supposed that the ship would have plenty of ropes to make the halters and he had tried to regulate the magic so that the horses would be as biddable as possible. But sailors in general do not know much of horses. They know the sea and that is all. Some of the sailors did their best to catch hold of the horses and harness them, but many had not the least idea how to begin or they were too afraid of the silvery, ghostly creatures to go anywhere near them. Of the hundred horses that Strange created only about twenty were eventually harnessed to the ship. These twenty were certainly instrumental in pulling the False Prelate off the sand, but equally useful was the great trough in the sandbank which appeared as more and more horses were created out of it.

In Portsmouth opinion was divided over whether Strange had done something glorious in saving the False Prelate or whether he had merely used the disaster to improve his own career. Many of the captains and officers about the place said that the magic he had done had been of a very showy sort and was obviously intended more to draw attention to his own talent and impress the Admiralty than to save the ship. Nor were they best pleased about the sand-horses. These did not just disappear when their work was done, as Strange had said they would; instead they swam about Spithead for a day and a half, after which they lay down and became sandbanks in new and entirely unexpected places. The masters and pilots of Portsmouth complained to the port-admiral that Strange had permanently altered the channels and shoals in Spithead so that the Navy would now have all the expense and trouble of taking soundings and surveying the anchorage again.

However, in London, where the Ministers knew as little of ships and seamanship as Strange, only one thing was clear: Strange had saved a ship, the loss of which would have cost the Admiralty a vast amount of money.