ng by; and the fisher-boats at anchor off Calshot, their
brown and olive sails reflected in the dun water, with dun clouds
overhead tipt with dull red from off the setting sun--a study for
Vandevelde or Backhuysen in the tenderest moods. Like a dream
seemed the twin lights of Hurst Castle and the Needles, glaring out
of the gloom behind us, as if old England were watching us to the
last with careful eyes, and bidding us good speed upon our way.
Then had come--still like a dream--a day of pouring rain, of
lounging on the main-deck, watching the engines, and watching, too
(for it was calm at night), the water from the sponson behind the
paddle-boxes; as the live flame-beads leaped and ran amid the
swirling snow, while some fifteen feet beyond the untouched oily
black of the deep sea spread away into the endless dark.

It took a couple of days to arrange our little cabin Penates; to
discover who was on board; and a couple of days, too, to become
aware, in spite of sudden starts of anxiety, that there was no post,
and could be none; that one could not be wanted, or, if one was
wanted, found and caught; and it was not till the fourth morning
that the glorious sense of freedom dawned on the mind, as through
the cabin port the sunrise shone in, yellow and wild through flying
showers, and great north-eastern waves raced past us, their heads
torn off in spray, their broad backs laced with ripples, and each,
as it passed, gave us a friendly onward lift away into the 'roaring
forties,' as the sailors call the stormy seas between 50 and 40
degrees of latitude.

These 'roaring forties' seem all strangely devoid of animal life--at
least in a December north-east gale; not a whale did we see--only a
pair of porpoises; not a sea-bird, save a lonely little kittiwake or
two, who swung round our stern in quest of food: but the seeming
want of life was only owing to our want of eyes; each night the wake
teemed more bright with flame-atomies. One kind were little
brilliant sparks, hurled helpless to and fro on the surface,
probably Noctilucae; the others (what they may be we could not guess
at first) showed patches of soft diffused light, paler than the
sparks, yet of the same yellow-white hue, which floated quietly
past, seeming a foot or two below the foam. And at the bottom, far
beneath, deeper under our feet than the summit of the Peak of
Teneriffe was above our heads--for we were now in more tha