d with such unction by her
brother, when laying down the law and giving a decided opinion.

Partings are sad things, and the sooner they are over the better. So
Sam thought too, no doubt, for he presently hailed us both to come down-
stairs, as time was up, and a man besides waiting with a hand-truck to
trundle my chest down to the quay in the Cattwater, off which Sam's
little schooner was lying.

Thereupon, Jane giving me a final hug, my chest was bundled below in a
brace of shakes, and Sam and I, accompanied by the man wheeling the
truck, were on our way down the Stoke Road towards Plymouth--a lingering
glance which I cast behind, in order to give a farewell wave of the hand
to my second mother, imprinting on my memory every detail of the little
cottage, with its clematis-covered porch, and the bright scarlet
geraniums and fuchsias in full bloom in front, and Jane Pengelly's
tearful face standing out amidst the flowers, crying out a last loving
"good-bye!"

We reached the schooner in good time so as to fetch out of the Sound
before the tide ebbed, and, after clearing the breakwater, as the wind
was to the northward of east, Sam made a short board on the port tack
towards the Eddystone, in order to catch the western stream--which
begins to run down Channel an hour after the flood, when about six miles
out or so from the land, the current inshore setting up eastwards
towards the Start and being against us if we tried to stem it by
proceeding at once on our true course.

When we had got into the stream, however, and thus had the advantage of
having the tideway with us, Sam let the schooner's head fall off; and
so, wearing her round, he shaped a straight course for the Lizard,
almost in the line of a crow's flight, bringing the wind nearly right
aft to us now on the starboard tack as we ran before it. We passed
abreast of the goggle-eyed lighthouse on the point which marks the
landfall for most mariners when returning to the English Channel after a
foreign voyage, close on to midnight--not a bad run from Plymouth Sound,
which we had left at four o'clock in the afternoon.

It was a beautiful bright moonlight night, the sea being lighted up like
a burnished mirror, and the clear orb making the distant background of
the Cornish coast come out in relief, far away on our western bow. The
wind being still fair for us, keeping to the east-nor'-east, Sam brought
it more abeam, bearing up so that he might pass between the