le family of his own.

Then airily and fierily he splashed away down the path for home.
Through the marshland he went, and down towards the stream. He
forded the wagon-torn drift eagerly, climbed up out of it, and
strode away beyond.

How young and fresh he felt as he went away again on his campaign
with earth and water! How air and fire subdued their sister
elements to themselves!

PISGAH

We had been going sixteen days on the home course to England, and
I had come to know him fairly well. He was a seaman who had
sailed the self-same mail-boat for some years past. I remembered
him on a brighter trip in summer-time when I was a good deal
younger and took the languors of the voyage less slumberously.
Now it was winter-time on the home-side of the Line, and I was
sailing under a cloud of news grave and stern. So I was rather
prone to see most things as much alike in a sort of dream of
neutral colors. My seafaring friend had helped me in the sultry
nights further south, had shown me a sleeping place high up among
the ropes, had called me in the grey dawn, or warned me when
lightning flashed and it seemed that a downpour threatened.
Afterwards we had passed Madeira, a cheering vista with its white
walls and red roofs and purple bougainvillea, and settled down
into wintry weather and storm-vexed seas. Now the last night up
the Channel had come, and the weather was calmer. We had seen the
scowling Ushant coast in the sun and shower of an icy mid-day. So
we were looking for a light to show very soon now an English
light, a Dorset light and the pulse of our chill quickened to
racing rhythm. 'How many voyages have you made before this one?'
I asked my friend as we leant over a rail together. He mentioned
an astonishing number. 'You must know a lot about the things that
I want to know' I said, 'the going to and fro of people, their
starting out and their coming back again. Doesn't it all seem
pretty stale to you by now?' 'No,' he said; 'it's my living, and
besides that it interests me watching the game. It's an
interesting bit of the game that I see, don't you think, sir,
coming to the fringes of two Promised Lands, and not tackling the
job of settling down in either? I've got interests, though, in
both of them.' He was silent, and we both filled our pipes again.
This friend of mine interested me: his reading tastes had
surprised me: he borrowed Mr. Masefield's works and Miss Olive
Schreiner's, but I had not often