is true, but then I had the great counterbalancing
advantage of almost entire liberty of action, being allowed to roam
about the place at my own sweet will and pleasure, with no lessons to
learn, and the only obligation placed on me that of reporting myself
regularly at meal-times; when, as the penalty for being late consisted
in my having to go without my dinner or tea, as the case might be, and I
possessed an unusually sensitive appetite which seldom failed to warn me
of the approach of the hour devoted to those refections, even when I was
out of earshot of the gong, I earned a well-founded reputation for the
most praiseworthy punctuality--the lesson I had when I first arrived at
the school having given me a wholesome horror of starvation!

In my wanderings about the neighbourhood I explored the country for
miles round. As for the beach, I investigated it with the painstaking
pertinacity of a surveying officer of the hydrographic department of the
Admiralty mapping out some newly-discovered shore. I knew every curve
and indentation of the coast eastwards as far as Worthing, with the
times of high and low water and the set of the tides, and was on
familiar terms with the coastguardsmen stationed between Eastbourne and
Preston and thence westwards. Crabs, too, and zoophytes, sea anemones,
and algae, were as keenly my study as if I were a marine zoologist,
although I might not perhaps have been able to describe them in
scientific language; while, should a stiff south-westerly gale cast up,
as it frequently did amongst other wreckage and ocean flotsam and
jetsam, fresh oysters torn from carefully cultivated beds further down
the coast, none were sooner acquainted with the interesting fact than I,
or gulped down the savoury "natives" with greater gusto--opening them
skilfully with an old sailor's jack-knife, which was a treasure I had
picked up amidst the pebbly shingle in one of my excursions.

My chief resort, however, when I could steal away thither without being
perceived from the school, was the quay close to the entrance to the
harbour, at the mouth of the little river which there made its efflux to
the sea.

Here the small coasting craft and Channel Island steamers of low draught
of water that used the port would lay up while discharging cargo, before
going away empty or in ballast, as there was little export trade from
the place; and it was my delight to board the different vessels and make
friends with the se