consequences. The captain of one of our
mail boats found it necessary to read one of them who disregarded it a
lesson which he would remember. He sent for the quartermaster with a
bucket and a mop, and ordered him to stay by this gentleman and clean up
till he had done.

The wind when we started was light and keen from the north. The
afternoon sky was clear and frosty. Southampton Water was still as oil,
and the sun went down crimson behind the brown woods of the New Forest.
Of the 'Moselle's' speed we had instant evidence, for a fast Government
launch raced us for a mile or two, and off Netley gave up the chase. We
went leisurely along, doing thirteen knots without effort, swept by
Calshot into the Solent, and had cleared the Needles before the last
daylight had left us. In a few days the ice would be gone, and we should
lie in the soft air of perennial summer.

Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes:
Eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum--

But the flying years had not stolen from me the delight of finding
myself once more upon the sea; the sea which is eternally young, and
gives one back one's own youth and buoyancy.

Down the Channel the north wind still blew, and the water was still
smooth. We set our canvas at the Needles, and flew on for three days
straight upon our course with a steady breeze. We crossed 'the Bay'
without the fiddles on the dinner table; we were congratulating
ourselves that, mid-winter as it was, we should reach the tropics and
never need them. I meanwhile made acquaintances among my West Indian
fellow-passengers, and listened to their tale of grievances. The
Exhibition had been well enough in its way, but Exhibitions would not
fill an empty exchequer or restore ruined plantations. The mother
country I found was still regarded as a stepmother, and from more than
one quarter I heard a more than muttered wish that they could be 'taken
into partnership' by the Americans. They were wasting away under Free
Trade and the sugar bounties. The mother country gave them fine words,
but words were all. If they belonged to the United States they would
have the benefit of a close market in a country where there were
60,000,000 sugar drinkers. Energetic Americans would come among them and
establish new industries, and would control the unmanageable negroes.
From the most loyal I heard the despairing cry of the Britons, 'the
barbarians drive us into the sea and the sea drives us back upon the