ant, the gloomy black hull from whose sides
would break from time to time a sullen, white flash, like a leap of
fire from a cannon's mouth, as the swing of the sea swerved the black,
wet timbers to the morning lustre. On the other bow was a little
barque with a milk-white hull, the French tri-colour trembling at her
gaff-end, and her canvas looking like shot silk, with the play of the
shadows in the bright and polished concavities. Past her a big French
lugger was hobbling clumsily over the short seas, and farther off
still, a tall, black steamboat, brig-rigged, her portholes glittering
as though the whole length of her was studded with brilliants, was
clumsily thrusting through it. Against the hard, blue marble of the
sky the horizon stood firm, making one think of the rim of a green
lens, broken in places by a leaning sail--a shadowy pear-like shaft.
The Channel throbbed in glory under the sun; the full spirit of the sea
was in the morning; and the wide and spreading surface of waters gave
as keen an oceanic significance to the inspiration of the moment, as
though the eye that centred the scene gazed from the heart of a South
Pacific solitude.

I stood leaning over the bulwarks humming an air. Never had my heart
beaten with so exquisite a sense of gladness and of happiness, as now
possessed it. I was disturbed in a reverie of love, in which was
mingled the life and beauty of the scene I surveyed, by the arrival of
Caudel. He was varnished with soap, and blue with recent shaving, but
there was no trace of the sleepless hours I had forced him to pass in
the little sea-blue eyes which glittered under his somewhat ragged,
thatched brow. He was a man of about fifty years of age; his dark hair
was here and there of an iron-grey, and a roll of short-cut whiskers
met in a bit of a beard upon the bone in his throat. He carried a true
salt-water air in his somewhat bowed legs, in his slow motions, and in
his trick of letting his arms hang up and down as though they were
pump-handles. His theory of dress was, that what kept out the cold
also kept out the heat, and so he never varied his attire, which was
composed of a thick double-breasted waistcoat, a long pilot-cloth coat,
a Scotch cap, very roomy pilot-cloth trousers, a worsted cravat, and
fishermen's stockings.

I exchanged a few words with him about the boy Bobby, inquired the
situation of the yacht, and after some talk of this kind, during which
I gathered that