h the harbour authorities. We had
run that night on top of the full spring tide. Not knowing the
harbour, we had tied up to the first bollard, and gone incontinently
to sleep. We were awakened by the sound of water thundering on top of
us, and rushing up found to our dismay that we were lying in the mud,
and a large sewer was discharging right on to our decks. Before we had
time to get away or clean up, the harbour master, coming alongside,
called on us to pay harbour duties. We stoutly protested that as a
pleasure yacht we were not liable and intended to resist to the death
any such insult being put upon us. He was really able to see at once
that we were just young fellows out for a holiday, but he had the last
word before a crowd of sight-seers who had gathered on the quay above
us.

"Pleasure yacht, pleasure yacht, indeed!" he shouted as he rode away,
"I can prove to any man with half an eye that you are nothing but one
of them old coal or mud barges."

The following year the wind suited better the other way. We were
practically all young doctors this time, the cook being a very
athletic chum in whose rooms were collected as trophies, in almost
every branch of athletics, over seventy of what we called silver
"pots." As a cook he proved a failure except in zeal. It didn't really
interest him, especially when the weather was lively. On one occasion
I reported to the galley, though I was the skipper that year, in
search of the rice-pudding for dinner--Dennis, our cook, being
temporarily indisposed. Such a sight as met my view! Had I been
superstitious I should have fled. A great black column the
circumference of the boiler had risen not less than a foot above the
top rim, and was wearing the iron cover jauntily on one side as a
helmet. It proved to be rice. He had filled the saucepan with dry
rice, crowded in a little water, forced the lid on very tight and left
it to its own devices!

Nor, in his subsequent capacity as deckhand, did he redeem in our eyes
the high qualities of seamanship which we had anticipated from him.

Our tour took us this time through the Menai Straits, _via_ Carnarvon
and the Welsh coast, down the Irish Channel to Milford Haven. In the
region of very heavy tides and dangerous rocks near the south Welsh
coast, we doubled our watch at night. One night the wind fell very
light, and we had stood close inshore in order to pass inside the
Bishop Rocks. The wind died out at that very moment, and th