I feel, fit into our thought, as old words will at times to a new tune. I shall never forget reading "Les Pêcheurs d'Islands" many years ago, when I was staying at St. Ives, in Cornwall. I used to take it out with me to the sands, at the fishing end of the town, where all the boats were pulled up, and read, a little at the time, and talk to the men who were, as it seemed, playing at work, in the true leisurely Cornish fashion, with nets and boats; and watch the glistening, changing light over the bay, and the tide creeping up across the sands, and the grey church-tower and the grey old town; atmosphere and sea and sand all alike lavender-tinted, save for the highlypainted boats, and many-coloured garments hung to dry, fluttering all along the quay and sands and out from every window. The fishermen were English and not French, but still there was as little difference between them and the fisherman of the Islands, who lounged and smoked just in the same leisurely fashion, as there would be, I feel, between the life drawn in "Le Matelot' and the life here. Narrow, crooked streets and many steps, grey homes, huddled one against another, the russet sails spread out to dry-I seem to see it all, and yet closer beneath my eyes those magic books, holding between their flimsy yellow

paper covers such pictures of the sea and its moods, such a breath of pungent, clear air, such a roar of the deep sea and whisper of waves on the shingle, intermingled with the desultory talk of the men and the clink of the women's knittingneedles. These are all books to be read very close to the sea, as one feels that they must have been written.

CHAPTER XI

"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
-'Twas sad as sad could be ;

It has been another blazing hot day, but the sky has lifted, the air is clear enough to breathe, the sun is out, and in spite of the heat we have been feeling vastly contented with ourselves and life in general, and not in the least in sympathy with the Captain's longing for a wind "to push her on a bit." There must, however, be a little air somewhere, though against us, for this morning a big four-masted ship came lolloping slowly over the western horizon, and then hung up in the calm, about a mile to our stern, signalling herself as homeward bound from Brazil.

The excitement on board our ship was intense.

Though for over a month we had been traversing a part of the Atlantic which is in truth a thick maze of steamship routes, not a sail, not a funnel had we seen, not one single sign of alien life indeed, beyond that one solitary wild-duck. Then suddenly we were in a whirl-life had never seemed more busy, more crowded, more full of thrilling possibilities in the very heart of London. We were in touch with the world again-anything might happen-and we did up our hair, realizing that the people on the other ship could certainly see up as plainly with their telescopes as we could see them with ours: probably more so, for I do not suppose for a moment that their hands shook with sheer excitement. "Who knows," said Charlotte, in an almost awed whisper; "there might be someone we know on board her." I did not jeer at my friend because of the note of hope in her voice, nor did I remark to her that our one idea had been to escape from people we knew, or that it was scarcely likely, as we had no acquaintances in Brazil, that any could be returning from thence in a sailing-ship, though my forbearance arose merely from the very simple fact that I felt exactly as she did about it, all stirred up by expectancy and that strange gregarious instinct which never quite dies out of us;

so that meeting in some strange place people we have once known, or who have known people that we have known, or lived in places where we have lived, we are at once all interest and good-fellowship, without the least pause to remember how boresome such meetings have before proved, when the first gush is over.

After some conversation with flags the Captain inquired if the strange vessel would take letters home for us, and on her answering in the affirmative we all rushed off to get our writing materials, and busied ourselves with brief letters, as there was no knowing when a wind might spring up and our mail-ship depart. While we wrote the lifeboat was launched, with six men and boys at the oars and the mate at the stern to steer. Charlotte and I implored to be allowed to go, but the Captain would not hear of it, for the sky had a curious brassy look, and he was afraid that a wind might spring up before we could get back; and, after all, it must have been frightfully hot in that small boat on the open sea, for even under the awning it was really intense during the midday. So we consoled ourselves with claret-and-soda on the poop-deck, feeling such an event as this interview with a strange ship was a sort of party and worthy of celebration; while for the men who