CHAPTER II

A BOATING TRIP

It was not yet evening, but the sun was very low in the west on our right hand; a large moon would be rising a little while before eight; the breeze continued to blow strong, and the ocean rolled into the land in tall dark-green lines of waves, melting as they charged in endless succession into wide spaces of foam, orange coloured by the sunset.

‘Do you hear that echo of thunder in the cliff I told you about?’ said my husband.

I listened and said ‘Yes.’

‘It is like a distant firing of guns,’ said Mary.

‘You have some good boats down there dancing beside the pier,’ said my husband to the boatman.

‘Ay,’ answered the boatman, ‘you’ll need to sail a long way round the coast to find better boats than them.’

‘That is a pretty boat, Mary,’ said I, pointing to one with two masts--a tall mast in the fore-part and a short mast at the stern; she was painted green and red, and she was very clean and white inside, and she appeared in my eyes the prettiest of all the boats as she dived and tumbled and leaped buoyantly and not without grace upon the sharp edges of the broken water.

‘That’s my boat, lady,’ said the sailor.

‘What is her name?’ inquired Mary.

‘The _Mary Hann_, he answered. ‘I named her after my wife. My wife is gone dead. I’ve got no wife now but she,’ and he pointed with his thumb backwards at his boat, ‘and she’s but a poor wife too. She airns little enough for me. T’other kept the home together with taking in washing, but nobody comes to Piertown now. Folks want what’s called attractions. But the Local Board’ll do nothen except buy land as belongs to the men who forms the Local Board, and the likes of me has to pay for that there land, and when it’s bought fower five times as much as it’s worth, it’s left waste. Lord, the jobbery! Are you making any stay here, sir?’

‘Yes,’ answered my husband, ‘we are here for a month.’

‘And when might ye have arrived?’ inquired the boatman.

‘To-day,’ replied my husband.

‘There’s some very good fishing to be had here, sir,’ said the boatman. ‘If I may make so bold, whenever you wants a trip out, whether for fishing or rowing or sailing, if so be as you’ll ask for me, my name being William Hitchens, best known as Bill Hitchens, pronounced in one word Billitchens--for there’s parties here as’ll swear they didn’t know who you vos asking for if you don’t call me Billitchens--if you ever want a boat, sir, and you ladies, if you’ll ask for Billitchens, you’ll meet with satisfaction. There’s nothen to touch the _Mary Hann_ in sailing, whilst for fishing she’s as steady as a rock, as you may guess, sir, by obsarving her beam.’

‘When I want a boat I will ask for Billitchens,’ said my husband, glancing at me with a smile in his eye. ‘This lady--my wife--is fonder of the sea than I am. I dare say she will sometimes take a cruise with you. But the weather must be fine when she does so.’

‘You trust the weather to me, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘Man and boy for over forty-eight year I’ve been a-crawling about this beach and a-studying the weather. You leave him to me. Whenever you want a cruise you ask for Billitchens and the _Mary Hann_, and if the weather ain’t promising for the likes of such a lady as you, you shall have the truth.’

‘What are your charges?’ said my husband.

‘Wan and sixpence an hour,’ answered the boatman cheerfully, ‘but if you’d like to engage my boat by the week ye shall have her at your own price, giving me so much every time ye takes me along.’

‘Is she not heavy to row?’ said I.

‘Lord love ye!’ he cried, gazing at his boat with a sour smile of wonder at the question. ‘A hinfant could send her spinning. ‘Sides,’ he added, ‘I’ll take care to ship a pair o’ light oars for you, lady, what’s called sculls, nigh as light as this here baccay-pipe.’

‘Well, good afternoon, Mr. Hitchens,’ said my husband, and we strolled in the direction of our home, for the shadow of the evening was now upon the sea, and the strong wind seemed to have grown very cold on a sudden.

However, before we retired to rest the night fell silent, the sea stretched in a dark sheet, and from our windows, so high seated was the house, the ocean looked to slope steep into the sky, as though, indeed, it were the side of a mighty hill. The moon rode over it, and under the orb lay a column of glorious silver which stirred like the coils of a moving serpent as the swell or the heave of the water ran through it. The dark body of a ship passed through that brilliant path of light as we stood looking, and the sight was beautiful.

My little ones were sleeping well. Johnny slept in our room and the baby with the nurse, for my husband could not bear to be disturbed in his sleep. I looked at my boy, and asked my husband to tell me if he did not think there was already a little bloom on Johnny’s cheek, and I kissed my child’s sweet brow and golden hair.

But it was long before my eyes closed in sleep. I lay hearkening to the dull subdued thunder of the surf beating upon the beach far below at the foot of the cliffs. It was a new strange noise to me, and I lay listening to it as though to a voice muttering in giant whispers out of the hush of midnight; and when at last I fell asleep I dreamt that I was in the _Mary Hann_, and that Bill Hitchens was steering the boat, and that she was sailing directly up the line of glorious silver under the moon; and I remember that I asked him in my dream how long it would take to reach the moon that as we sailed waxed bigger and soared higher; but instead of answering he put his knuckles into his eyes and began to sob and cry, and I awoke to hear little Johnny calling to me to take him into my bed.

And now followed days as happy as light hearts and bright skies and good health could render them. The weather continued splendid. Sometimes it was as hot as ever it had been during the month of July in the city of the Abbey Church. There was a pleasant neighbourhood, a country of woods and verdant dingles and swelling pastures, and we made many excursions, and in particular did we enjoy a visit to some old ruins which had once been an abbey, but now its windows yawned, its roof was gone, large portions of masonry had fallen, its floor was a tangled growth of rank grass and weeds. We listened to the wind whistling through these ruins: we listened with bated breath and with raised imaginations, for the noise of the wind was like the chanting of friars intermixed with a thin wailing of women’s voices; and as I listened I could not help thinking to myself that it was as though the ghosts of long-departed monks and chaste and holy nuns had viewlessly assembled round about us to sing some solemn dirge, and that if our eyes were as fine a sense as our hearing--if, indeed, we could _see_ the invisible as we could _hear_ it--we might behold the vision of the building itself spread over our heads and on either hand of us, in roof, in glorious coloured window, in sepulchral monument.

Here it was that my little Johnny, in running from me towards the grass which grew upon what had been the pavement of this ancient abbey, tripped and fell and lay screaming as though fearfully hurt. Mary took him up: he was not hurt. My husband, looking into the grass to observe what had tripped the child, put his hand upon something grey and picked up a little skull. ‘Good God!’ he cried, casting it from him with a shudder, ‘let us get away from this place.’ But Mary remained behind alone for some minutes, with her eyes bent upon the little skull, musing upon it.

Though we made several inland excursions our chief haunts were the pier and the beach. Those were happy days indeed. My sister and I would take camp-stools down on to the sands, and long mornings did we thus pass, my husband moving indolently here and there, smoking, examining pools of water, stooping to pick up a shell; Johnny scooping with a stick at my side; baby sleeping in the arms of the nurse. There we would sit and watch the quiet surface of the sea that melted into the blue air where the sky came down to it, and gaze at the oncoming breaker poising its tall emerald-green head for a breathless instant, like some huge snake about to strike, ere tumbling in thunder and snow and roaring seawards in a cataract of yeast.

We seemed--indeed, I believe we were--the only visitors in the place. Nobody intruded upon us; the miles of sand were our own. Robinson Crusoe’s dominion was not more uninterrupted.

The boatman named William Hitchens had called twice at the house early in the morning to know if we would go for a nice little sail or row during the day, but the answer I had sent by the servant was, ‘Not yet.’ I was in no hurry to go for a nice little sail or a row. When I was on the sands the sea was so close to me that it was almost the same as being on it; and the novelty of having the sea feathering to my feet in white and broken waters remained too great an enjoyment for some days to induce a wish in me for wider experiences. And then again, neither Mary nor my husband had the least taste for boating, so that if I went I must go alone. I was not even able to have my children with me, for the nurse declared that the mere looking from the beach at a boat rocking upon the water made her feel ill, and I dared not single-handed take the children, for how could I, holding the baby, have looked after little Johnny, who was always on the move, crawling here and creeping there, and who was just the sort of child to wriggle on to a seat of the boat and tumble overboard whilst my head was turned?

However, after we had been at Piertown five days we walked down to the sands as usual after breakfast, and as we passed the entrance of the pier Bill Hitchens approached us, pulling at a grey lock of hair that hung upon his forehead under an old felt bandit-shaped hat.

‘A beautiful morning for a sail or a row, lady,’ said he, addressing himself to me as though he had long before made up his mind that there was no custom to be got out of my husband and my sister, ‘why not wenture on an hour, mum? There’s as pretty a little offshore wind a-blowing as could be wished. And look how smooth the water is! Only let me draw you clear of this here ground swell, and ye won’t know you’re afloat. Or if you don’t like sailing, I’ll put a small oar into the boat, and with me rowing agin ye, lady, ye shall see how light a boat she is.’

‘Go, Agnes,’ said my husband, observing that I looked wistfully at the water.

‘Come, Mary!’ said I.

‘No, dear,’ she answered, ‘I am certain to suffer from headache afterwards.’

‘Why don’t _you_ come along, sir?’ said the boatman to my husband.

‘Because I am very well, thank you, Billitchens, and I wish to remain well,’ answered my husband.

‘I will go,’ said I, and instantly the boatman was in motion. He ran with uncouth gestures to a ladder that descended the pier-side, disappeared down it, and presently emerged in a little skiff which he propelled with an oar over the stern. Having arrived at his boat, which was moored in the middle of the small harbour, if I may so term the space of water within the embrace of the crooked arm of the pier, he freed and brought her to some steps. I entered, perhaps a little nervously, sat down, and Bill Hitchens throwing his oars over pulled the boat out to sea. Little Johnny screamed and wept, imagining that I was leaving him for ever. I kissed my hand and waved it to him, and Mary, taking the little fellow in her arms, comforted him.

Now out of that simple English scene of coast life, out of the familiar commonplace experience of a boating trip, what, if it were not death, what should be able to shape itself so potent in all horror as to utterly and absolutely shipwreck my happiness and make a frightful tragedy of my life? Death it might well have been; again and again small sailing boats are capsizing and their inmates are thrown into the water and drowned; but worse than death was to befal me. When I close my eyes and behold with the vision of my mind the scene of that little town, and the terraces of the cliffs, though I am able to connect the long chain of circumstance link by link, the memory of the disaster and all that followed the disaster affects me even at this instant of time with the violence of a paralysing revelation. I know the past to be true, and still I gaze dumbly and with terror backwards, incapable of crediting it.

But the dreadful misfortune that was to overwhelm me did not happen at once. No: my short excursion that morning I thoroughly enjoyed. All was safe, well, and delightful. I told the boatman to keep somewhat close in to the shore, and I held my husband and sister and children in view all the while. The boatman rowed leisurely, and my dear ones on the shore kept pace with the boat until they had arrived at their favourite spot on the sands, where they seated themselves and watched me. I rowed a little and found the oar the man had placed in the boat for my use very light and manageable; but I plied it unskilfully; indeed I was but a wretched oarswoman. Yet it amused me to dip the blade into the water however clumsily, and to feel that the boat received something of her impulse from the swing of my figure.

Bill Hitchens talked much, and had I heeded his conversation I might have found his queer words and odd thoughts and expressions amusing; but I was too much occupied with my oar, and with looking at the group on the sands, and with admiring the coast, to attend to his queer speech. And, indeed, we were at just such a distance from the coast as enabled me to witness in perfection its incomparable romantic beauties. The cliffs rose in dark and rugged ramparts, and their gloomy massy colours were peculiarly defined by the line of white surf which, the fall of the breakers being continuous, seemed fixed as though painted along the foot of the coast. The windows of the house we occupied sparkled over the edge of the heights, but the structure was so high lodged, the altitude from the sea appeared so prodigious, that spite of the softening shadow of trees behind it, and spite of its quaint and cosy shape, it had an odd, wild, windy look to my eyes, and I wondered as I gazed at it that it had not been levelled long ago by one of the many hurricanes of wind which Bill Hitchens told me thundered across the sea and against the land in winter time, blind with snow and black with flying scud. And the town made me think of Tennyson’s description of a coastal village, for there was a frosty sparkle upon the houses as though they were formed of blocks of rock salt. The sky was a deep blue, and I noticed that it seemed to tremble and thrill where the bend of it disappeared past the edge of the cliffs, as if the dye of the cliffs themselves were lifting and sifting into it, and deepening the beauty of its hue just there. The water was everywhere flashful with the light wind that was blowing from the land. Presently the boatman said:

‘Lady, let me gi’ you a bit of a sail?’

I consented, and he took my oar from me and laid it in the boat, then loosed a big sail that lay upon the seats and hoisted it, and afterwards he set a little sail at the stern, and then sat down at the tiller and steered, making the boat skim along on a line with the beach. My dear ones flourished their hands to me.

This was enjoyment indeed. The boat seemed to me to sail wonderfully fast; I looked over the stern and perceived that she left behind her a long furrow as beautiful with its ornamentation of foam and bubble and eddies as a length of rich lace. Hitchens sailed the boat to and fro, and all the time he was bidding me observe what a beautiful boat she was, how there was nothing whatever to be afraid of, how in such a boat as the _Mary Hann_, as he called her, a party of people might sail round the United Kingdom in perfect comfort and security.

‘Only make it worth my while,’ said he, ‘and I’d go to Ameriky in this here boat. Make it worth my while, lady, and I’d double the Harn in her. Ameriky was discovered by folks as would have swopped their precious eyes for such a boat as this here to make the voyage in. I don’t speak of Australey, for Cook he had a ship; but I’ve heered tell of Columbus; there’s one of us chaps as has read all about that gent and is always a-yarning about him; and ower and ower I’ve heard him say that that there Columbus would have swopped his precious eyes for the likes of such a boat as the _Mary Hann_ for to make his discovery with.’

In this manner Bill Hitchens discoursed about his boat, as he sat beside the tiller with his head well between his shoulders and his back rounded like a cat’s at the sight of a dog.

After this I was continually making excursions with Bill Hitchens. Having got to know him, I never would hire another in his place. Indeed, he took care that nobody should supplant him, and called for orders every morning with the punctuality of the butcher or the grocer. Often I would go out twice a day, so keen was my enjoyment of the pastime of sailing and rowing. Twice my husband accompanied me, but after the second time he told me he had had enough, and he went no more in the boat. Once I coaxed Mary into joining me, and in less than five minutes the boatman was obliged to put her ashore, and when I returned two hours later I found her motionless on the sofa with a sick headache.

The behaviour of the boatman did not belie the character I seemed to find written in his face. He proved a very honest, civil, deserving fellow, possessed of a quality of sourness that imparted a particular relish to his odd manner of speaking. I did not fear to be alone with this man. I had every confidence in his judgment and prudence. He was allowed by his comrades of the beach to be one of the smartest boatmen on the coast. My husband ascertained this, and he also agreed with me in my opinion of the fellow’s respectability, and day after day I would enter the boat and my husband would stand watching me without the faintest misgiving of any sort in either of us.

On several occasions Hitchens carried me out to so great a distance that the features of the land were indistinguishable, and these long trips I enjoyed most of all; they were like voyages, and when I stepped on shore I would feel as though I had just arrived from the other side of the world.

We had now been a day over three weeks at Piertown. The weather had continued fine and warm throughout--in truth, a more beautiful October I never remember--and we had all benefited vastly by the change. But on the morning of this day my husband received a letter. He opened it, read it attentively, and exclaimed to me across the breakfast table, ‘I shall have to leave you for a couple of days.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

He passed the letter to me: it was a business letter, addressed to him by his clerk. The nature of the business does not concern us; enough that the call was important and peremptory. The business, my husband said, would certainly detain him in Bath until the hour of the departure of a late train on the following night, if indeed he should be able to return then.

I packed his handbag, and Mary and I walked with him to the railway station. I kissed him, and we parted.

My sister and I returned home to take the children to the sands. We passed the morning under the cliffs, talking and reading and playing with the children. It was a bright day, but I afterwards remembered noticing that the blue of the heavens was wanting in the beautiful clear vividness of hue of the preceding days. The azure had a somewhat dim and soiled look, such as one might fancy it would exhibit in a very fine, thin dust-storm. I also afterwards remembered having observed that there was a certain brassiness in the glare of the sun, as if his light were the reflection of his own pure golden beams cast by a surface of burnished brass or copper. These things I afterwards recollected I had noticed, yet I do not remember that I spoke of them to my sister.

We dined at one o’clock. The road from our house to the sands carried us past the entrance to the pier. As we leisurely strolled, Bill Hitchens lifted his breast from the post which he was overhanging, and approached us with a respectful salutation of his hand to his brow.

‘Will you be going out this afternoon, lady?’ he asked.

‘My husband has been called away,’ I replied, ‘and I do not feel as if I should care to go upon the water during his absence.’

‘You will find the afternoon tedious, dear,’ said Mary.

‘It’s a beautiful day, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘There’s a nice little air o’ wind stirring. Couldn’t ask for a prettier day for a sail, lady.’

‘It is somewhat cloudy,’ said I, directing my gaze at the sky.

‘Fine weather clouds, lady,’ said the boatman. ‘Keep your sight upon ’em for a bit and you’ll find they’re scarcely moving.’

‘That is true,’ said I.

‘If you go,’ said Mary, ‘I will take Johnny and baby for a drive.’

‘You’ll soon be leaving Piertown, lady, worse luck!’ said the boatman, with an insinuating grin. ‘This here fine weather ain’t a-going to last neither. It won’t be long afore we’ll be laying our boats up. It may be blowing hard to-morrow, lady, and it may keep on blowing until your time’s up for retarning.’

I reflected and said, ‘Well, Hitchens, you can get your boat ready for me by half-past two or a quarter to three. I’ll be back by four,’ said I, addressing Mary, as we walked home, ‘and by that time you’ll have returned. Do not keep baby out later than four,’ and we talked of my husband and on home matters as we climbed the road that led to the level of the cliff.

At a quarter-past two I was ready to walk to the pier for a trip which I thought might likely enough prove my last, and which was not to exceed an hour and a quarter. I was dressed in the costume in which I usually made these excursions--in a blue serge dress, a warm jacket, and a sailor’s hat of grey straw. An old-fashioned fly stood at the door waiting for Mary and the nurse and children. I took baby in my arms and kissed her, and I lifted Johnny and kissed him and saw the little party into the fly, which drove off.

I lingered a moment or two. A strange sense of loneliness suddenly possessed me. I cannot imagine what could have caused it if it were not the silence that followed upon the fly driving off, together with the thought that my husband was away. I entered the little parlour to ascertain the time by the clock on the mantelpiece, for my watch had stopped and I had left it in my bedroom. Upon the table lay a pair of baby’s shoes, and a horse and cart that my husband had bought for Johnny was upon the floor. As I looked at these things I was again visited by an unaccountable feeling of loneliness. But it could possess no possible signification to me, and passing out of the house I closed the hall-door and walked briskly down to the pier.

The boat was ready. I entered her, and Hitchens rowed out of the harbour. The surface of the water was smooth, for the small breeze of the morning had weakened and was now no more than a draught of air; but the sea undulated with what sailors call ‘a swell,’ upon which the boat rose and sank with a sensation of cradling that was singularly soothing to me. The horizon was somewhat misty, and I observed that the extremities of the coast on either hand in the distance were blurred, showing indeed as though they were mirrored in a looking-glass upon which you had slightly breathed.

‘It looks somewhat foggy out upon the sea,’ said I.

‘Nothen but heat, lady, nothen but heat. I like to see fog myself with the wind out at Nothe. When that happens with fine weather it sinifies that fine weather’s a-going to last.’

The figures of a few boatmen idly lounged upon the esplanade. A man in a white apron, smoking a pipe, stood in the door of one of the public-houses, watching us as the boat receded. A coastguardsman, stick in hand, leaned over the edge of the pier, gazing down at the little cluster of boats which swayed upon the gently heaving water of the harbour. The sun shone upon some bright gilt sign of a cock, or bird of some sort, over the door of one of the public-houses; and next door to this sign was another, the painted head and bust of a woman eagerly inclining forwards, with the right arm advanced and a wreath in her hand. It had probably been the figure-head of a ship.

These little details of the picture I remember remarking as I looked at the shore whilst the boat leisurely drew away. What a dull, motionless place did Piertown seem! The main street climbing the hill was visible past the curve of the pier, and only two figures were to be seen ascending it.

‘I cannot understand how you men get a living,’ said I to Bill Hitchens.

‘We don’t onderstand it ourselves, lady,’ said he.

‘You are boatmen, but nobody hires your boats,’ said I. ‘How do you live?’

‘It’s a riddle, mum,’ answered Hitchens, ‘and there ain’t no answer to it.’

‘Yet those boatmen,’ said I, ‘who are standing upon the esplanade are comfortably dressed, they appear neat and clean, their clothes may be rough but they are fairly good and warm, they are all smoking and I suppose they have to pay for the tobacco they smoke; they, and others like them, are constantly in and out of the public-houses, and the beer which they drink must cost them money. How do they manage?’

‘I’ve been man and boy getting on for eight and forty years upon that there beach,’ said Bill Hitchens, ‘and if you ask me to tell you how me and the likes of me manages, my answer is, lady, I gives it up.’

We were silent, and I continued to look at the shore and to admire the scene of it.

‘The time was,’ said Bill Hitchens meditatively, ‘when I hoped to live to see the day as ’ud find me the landlord of a public-house. When all’s said and done, lady, I don’t know that a plain man like myself could ask for a more enjoyable berth than a public. Take a dark, wet, cold night, blowing hard and the air full of snow and hail. Only think of the pleasure of opening the door just to look out, so as to be able to step back again into the light and warmth and all the different smells of the liquors,’ he added, snuffing. ‘Only think how pleasingly the time flies in yarning with customers. Then, if ever ye stand in need of a drain, there it is--anything ye like and nothen to pay; ’cos when a landlord drinks it’s always at the expense of his customers, whether they knows it or not. Then think again, lady, of a snug little parlour at the back, all shining with clean glasses and mugs like silver, with a warm fire and a kettle of boiling water always ready--ah!’ He broke off with a deep sigh.

‘I’ll take an oar,’ said I.

‘Lor’ bless me!’ he cried, running his eyes over the boat. ‘I’ve forgotten to ship a pair of sculls for you,’ by which term he signified the light oars he was in the habit of placing in the boat for my use.

‘The oar you are rowing with will be too heavy for me, I fear,’ said I.

I dorn’t think it will, mum,’ he answered. ‘Suppose ye try it. After you’re tired of rowing we’ll hoist the sail, for we shall find more wind stirring when we get out furder.’

He adjusted the oar and I seated myself at it and began to row. He sat in the bows of the boat near the tall mast and I upon a hinder seat near to that end of the boat which I had heard him call the ‘stern sheets.’ I did not find the oar so heavy as I had imagined. The boatman had placed it so as to fairly balance it and I continued to swing it without much trouble.

But after I had been rowing a few minutes the pressure of the handle of the oar in my grasp caused my rings to hurt me. I endured the inconvenience until it became a pain; then, tilting the oar and supporting it by my elbow, I pulled off my rings--that is to say, my wedding-ring and two others, all that I wore--and placed them by my side on the sail, which lay in a sort of bundle along the seats. I never had any superstitious feeling about my wedding-ring. Over and over again had I removed it to wash my hands. With many women, when once the wedding-ring is on, it is on for ever. Well would it have been for me had I possessed the sentiment of tender and graceful superstition that influences most wives in this way.

My rings being removed I applied myself again to the oar, and for about a quarter of an hour Bill Hitchens and I continued to row the boat out into the open sea. By this time we had reached a distance of a mile from the land. The faint air had been slowly freshening into a little breeze, and the water was rippling briskly against the side of the boat. I was now tired of rowing, and, asking Bill Hitchens to take the oar from me, I rose from my seat and sat down near the tiller.

‘May as well hoist the sail now, lady, don’t ye think?’ said Bill Hitchens.

‘Yes, you can hoist the sail,’ said I, ‘but I do not wish to go too far from the land. What o’clock is it?’

He extracted an old silver watch from somewhere under his jersey and gave me the time.

‘I wish to be home by about a quarter past four,’ said I.

He answered that he would see to it, and, seizing hold of a rope which passed through the top of the mast, he hoisted the sail. He then came to where I was sitting, and set the little sail upon the mast at the stern, and when this was done he grasped the tiller, and the boat, feeling the pressure of the breeze in her broad canvas--for though she was a small boat she carried a sail that I would think was disproportionately large for her size--heeled over and cut through the water on her side very quickly.

‘It’s a nice soldier’s wind for the land, lady,’ said the boatman.

‘What is a soldier’s wind?’ I asked.

‘Why,’ he answered, ‘a wind that allows ye to go there and back wherever ye may be bound to.’

‘The coast looks a long way off, Hitchens.’

‘It’s vurking up a bit hazy, lady, but there’s nothen to hurt.’

‘I expect the sky will be overcast before sunset,’ said I. ‘Do you see that bank of clouds hazily peering through the air over the coast there?’ and I indicated a portion of the land which certainly did not lie in the direction whence the wind was blowing; so that it was plain to me, ignorant as I was in all such matters, though my perception had been sharpened a little by being much upon the water, and by listening to Bill Hitchens discoursing upon the several aspects of his calling--I say it was plain to me that those clouds were working their way up over the land, and that if they did not promise a change of weather they must certainly betoken a shift of wind.

The boatman cast his eyes carelessly towards the coast and said ‘that there was nothing to hurt in them clouds, that he rather believed they were settling away instead of rising,’ and then he changed the subject by asking me if my husband had gone to London, and if I had ever seen London, and if it was as big a place as folks pretended it to be.