ost wonderful plants grew, and the palm
trees. And to Canada and Newfoundland, where the great icebergs came down
through the mist. And some carrying fish to the Mediterranean, whose shores
were all alive with wonders, to say nothing of the chances of seeing some
fighting on the way, for England was at war with France and Spain, and
rumours of mighty doings reached us at times. And some taking tea and
tobacco to Hamburg and Emden, where the people were all uncouth foreigners
who spoke neither French nor English and so must offer mighty change from
Sercq.

Then there were multitudes of smaller vessels, sloops and chasse-marees,
bound on shorter and still more profitable, if more dangerous voyages.
Wherever they were going, on whatsoever errand bent, it was into the great
outside world, and they all cried, "Come!"

Those shorter flights to the nearer shores had a special appeal of their
own, and the stories one heard among one's fellows--of the wild midnight
runs into Cornish creeks and Devon and Dorset coves, of encounters now and
again with the revenue men, of exhilarating flights and narrow escapes from
Government cutters--these but added zest to the traffic in one's
imagination which, in actual fact, might possibly have been found wanting.

The moral aspects of the free-trade business did not trouble me in the
slightest in those days. It was the old-established and natural trade of
the Islands, for which they had evidently been set just where they were
with that special end in view. We looked upon it as very much akin to the
running of cargoes into blockaded ports--a large profit for a large risk
and no ill-feeling, though, indeed, at times, human nature would out, and
attempts at the enforcement of laws in the making of which we had no hand,
would result in collisions, and occasionally in the shedding of blood.
Incidents of that kind were, of course, to be regretted, and were certainly
not sought for by our Island men, though doubtless at times the wilder
spirits would seek reprisal for the thwarting of their plans. But when even
one of the great men in England, who made these laws against free-trading,
could tell his fellow-lawmakers that the mind of man never could conceive
of it as at all equalling in turpitude those acts which are breaches of
clear moral virtue--how should it be expected that the parties chiefly
interested should take a stricter view of the matter?

In course of time my longing for the wider li