of
which he had played an active part in saving the lives of the crews.

"That there's the _Arizona_--her with the broken nose; smashed up like
matchwood she was, on the cliffs beyond Ferndale, and the captain
drowned and the second mate. That there's the _Neptune_. The trident's
gone, but you can see the beard and the wreath. She went down of a
sudden on a sunken rock, and never a man left to tell as how it
happened. This un's the _Admiral Seymour_, wrecked outside Silversands
Bay; but we had the lifeboat out, and took all off safe. And this here's
the _Polly Jones_, a coastin' steamer from Liverpool, as went clean in
two amongst them crags by the lighthouse, and her cargo of oranges
washed up along the shore next day till the beach turned yellow with
'em."

"You know a great deal about ships," said Isobel, to whom her host's
reminiscences were as thrilling as a story-book.

"I should that. I've been sailin' for the best part of fifty
year--leastways when I wasn't farmin'. I've not forgot as I promised to
row you over to the balk. If your ma's willin', we'd best make a start
now, whilst the tide's handy. It's worth your while to go; you'd not see
such a sight again, maybe, in a far day's journey."

Mrs. Binks declined to join the expedition, so only Mrs. Stewart and
Isobel stepped into the boat which Mr. Binks rowed over the bay with
swift and steady strokes. Their destination was a narrow spit of land
about a quarter of a mile distant, where the crumbling remains of an old
abbey rose gray among the surrounding rocks. Long years ago the monks
had fashioned the balk to catch their fish, and it still stood, a
survival of ancient days and ancient ways, close under the ruined wall
of the disused chapel. It consisted of a circle of stout oak staves,
driven into the sand, so as to enclose a space of about forty yards in
diameter, the staves being connected by twisted withes, so that the
whole resembled a gigantic basket. It was filled by the high tide, and
the retreating water, running through the meshes, left the fish behind
as in a trap, when they were very easily caught with the hands and
collected in creels.

"You wouldn't see more than a couple like it in all England," said Mr.
Binks. "They calls it poachin' now, and no one mayn't make a fresh one;
but this here's left, and goes with the White Coppice, and I've rented
the two for a matter of forty year."

He drew up the boat under the old abbey wall, and helping