the flight of
birds with great pinions; and, in a new schooner which passed this
window, on her first voyage to sea--a tall and slender ship, a being so
radiant in the sun as to look an evanescent and immaterial vision--as
inspiring and awful as the remoteness of a spiritual and lovely woman.

"I can't make out what you see in those craft," said my companion one
morning. "They're mostly ancient tubs, and at the most they only muck
about the coast. Now a P. & O. or a Cunarder! That's something to look
at." He was looking down at me, and there was a trace of contempt in
his smile.

He was right in a way. I felt rebuked and embarrassed, and could not
explain to him. These were the common objects of the Channel after all,
old and weather-broken, sea wagons from the Cowes point of view, source
of alarm and wonder to passengers on fine liners when they sight them
beating stubbornly against dirty winter weather, and hanging on to the
storm. Why should they take my interest more than battleships and
Cunarders? Yet I could potter about an ancient hooker or a tramp
steamer all day, when I wouldn't cross a quay to a great battleship. I
like the pungent smells of these old craft, just as I inhale the health
and odour of fir woods. I love their men, those genuine mariners, the
right diviners of sky, coast, and tides, who know exactly what their
craft will do in any combination of circumstances as well as you know
the pockets of your old coat; men who can handle a stiff and cranky
lump of patched timbers and antique gear as artfully as others would
the clever length of hollow steel with its powerful twin screws.

But when my slightly contemptuous companion spoke I had no answer, felt
out of date and dull, a fogey and an idle man. I had no answer
ready--none that would have satisfied this brisk young man, none that
would not have seemed remote and trivial to him.

He left me. Some other visitor had left behind Stevenson's _Ebb Tide_,
and trying to think out an excuse that would quiet the qualms I began
to feel for this idle preference of mine for old junk, I began picking
out the passages I liked. And then I came on these words of Attwater's
(though Stevenson, for certain, is speaking for himself): "Junk ...
only old junk!... Nothing so affecting as ships. The ruins of an empire
would leave me frigid, when a bit of an old rail that an old shellback
had leaned on in the middle watch would bring me up all standing."

IV. Bed-