nsured, and, being in a foreign port, it was understood he would have
her newly registered when he returned, which he fully intended.
So no alterations were made in the certificate here, and, I believe, her
old tonnage is still carved up somewhere inside her."

This was true enough. The figures on the certificate, 29.56, were those
I had seen on the beam in the forecastle.

"My husband never lived to reach England, and when she came back to F--,
though she was visited, of course, by the Custom House officer and
coastguard, nobody asked for her certificate, and so the alterations in
her were never explained. She was laid up at once in the F-- River, and
there she has remained."

Certain structural peculiarities in the main cabin--scarcely noted at
the time, but now remembered--served to confirm Mrs. Carlingford's
plainly told story. On my return to London that night I hunted up some
back volumes of Hunt, and satisfied myself on the matter of the _Wasp_
and her owner, William Carlingford. And, to be short, the transfer was
made on a fresh survey, the cheque sent to Mrs. Carlingford, and the
yawl _Siren_ passed into my hands.

All being settled, I wrote to my old acquaintance, Mr. Dewy, asking him
to fit the vessel out, and find me a steady skipper and crew--not
without some apprehension of hearing by return of post that Dewy and
Moss were ready and willing to sign articles with me to steer and sail
the yacht in their spare moments. Perhaps the idea did not occur to
them. At any rate they found me a crew, and a good one; and I spent a
very comfortable three months, cruising along the south-western coast,
across to Scilly, from Scilly to Cork and back to Southampton, where on
September 29, 1891, I laid the yacht up for the winter.

Thrice since have I applied to Messrs. Dewy and Moss for a crew, and
always with satisfactory results. But I must pass over 1892 and 1893
and come to the summer of 1894; or, to be precise, to Wednesday, the
11th of July. We had left Plymouth that morning for a run westward;
but, the wind falling light towards noon, we found ourselves drifting,
or doing little more, off the entrance of the small fishing haven of
Penleven. Though I had never visited Penleven I knew, on the evidence
of many picture-shows, that the place was well worth seeing.
Besides, had I not the assurances of the Visitors' Book in my cabin?
It occurred to me that I would anchor for an hour or two in the entrance
of