a breakfast as my slim purse would afford. We
then gave "Begum" (who looked after the vessel while we were away) a run
ashore for half an hour, while we trimmed up and made all snug.

At about half-past nine on the 6th we left the harbour in brilliant
sunshine, Ramsgate and Margate looking gay with their flags, yachts,
bathing machines, white houses, and throngs of holiday makers. The water
round the English coast looks hardly clean enough to bathe in after the
limpid crystal we had been used to at Jethou. It struck us as looking
peculiarly chalky and turbid, but a few days reconciled us to what we
shall in future have to put up with.

We kept close in to the North Foreland, to avoid the dreaded Goodwin
Sands, as we did not wish to leave the bones of the "Happy Return," with
her valuable cargo, upon them.

From the Foreland we took a straight course across the Thames estuary,
for what we thought was Walton Naze, but as we had no compass, and were
quite out of sight of land, we made a slight error, and about dusk found
ourselves close in with the shore. Not knowing where we were, as a fog
from the land had come bowling along over the calm sea, we entered a
pretty little bay, and dropped anchor for the night.

While we were preparing supper and wondering where we had got to, as
there was not a house, church, or other landmark in sight, we felt a
bump against our quarter, and immediately after a head appeared above
our side, with a "Good evening, mates; I thought as how you might want
summat from the town, so I jest put off to ye, seeing ye were strangers
like."

"Very good of you indeed, my man. Make fast and come aboard."

Our visitor did not want much inviting, for he rolled in over the side,
and squatted down on a locker, as if he had known us all his life. He
was a little round-bodied, big-fisted, ruddy man, of about sixty; a
thorough water-dog, who, when his tongue was loosened spun yarns and
sang us songs till near midnight. He was about the merriest little man I
ever met. He had served twenty years in the navy, and was an old wooden
frigate man, full to the brim with anecdotes. I thought at the time
that it would be worth while for some enterprising editor to send out an
expedition to capture him and make him spin yarns to fill up an
otherwise uninteresting column of some weekly paper. If I had the space
at my command I would recapitulate some of his stories here, but I have
not. If I had, my readers would ha