that might meet him
on the sea. One of these was the floating island that the Book of
Wonder tells of, another was so fantastic that we may doubt if even
the brilliant audacity of Shard could ever have found it practicable,
at least he never tried it so far as is known in that tavern by the
sea in which I glean my news, and the third he determined on carrying
out as he turned that morning for the Mediterranean. True he might yet
have practised piracy in spite of the step that he took, a little
later when the seas grew quiet, but that penultimate step was like
that small house in the country that the business man has his eye on,
like some snug investment put away for old age, there are certain
final courses in men's lives which after taking they never go back to
business.

He turned then for the Mediterranean with the English fleet behind
him, and his men wondered.

What madness was this,--muttered Bill the Boatswain in Old Frank's
only ear, with the French fleet waiting in the Gulf of Lyons and the
Spaniards all the way between Sardinia and Tunis: for they knew the
Spaniards' ways. And they made a deputation and waited upon Captain
Shard, all of them sober and wearing their costly clothes, and they
said that the Mediterranean was a trap, and all he said was that the
North wind should hold. And the crew said they were done.

So they entered the Mediterranean and the English fleet came up and
closed the straits. And Shard went tacking along the Moroccan coast
with a dozen frigates behind him. And the North wind grew in strength.
And not till evening did he speak to his crew, and then he gathered
them all together except the man at the helm, and politely asked them
to come down to the hold. And there he showed them six immense steel
axles and a dozen low iron wheels of enormous width which none had
seen before; and he told his crew how all unknown to the world his
keel had been specially fitted for these same axles and wheels, and
how he meant soon to sail to the wide Atlantic again, though not by
the way of the straits. And when they heard the name of the Atlantic
all his merry men cheered, for they looked on the Atlantic as a wide
safe sea.

And night came down and Captain Shard sent for his diver. With the sea
getting up it was hard work for the diver, but by midnight things were
done to Shard's satisfaction, and the diver said that of all the jobs
he had done--but finding no apt comparison, and being in need of a