prising
recovery.

Now, we were nearing the one country. It needed no drab island of Ushant
with its lighthouse to tell me this; for hardly had I put down in my
diary "Much milder," when it became necessary to write "Much colder."
The tumults of the Bay were over and gone, and we were under a dun sky
dropping rain which obviously belonged to the English Channel.

We swung round Ushant and became more aware of the ups and downs of
navigation; these were less noticeable as we ran on. The prospect, or say
circumspect of the day was narrowed in by dismal rainstorm, and once
more it was a bleak amusement trying to make out the forms of ships
through the foggy veils. The wind moaning, the rain splashing, measured
out long hours, till all saddened into night with little to notice, save
the gulls and divers whom such weather suited well. At any rate we were
not unfortunate in our direction. The _Hammonia_ going the other way with
passengers showed us that by contrast.

The night elapsed, we came abeam of the Isle of Wight, which showed
but indistinctly, though the day was cold and steady. Calm indeed lay the
green Channel up which the _Bonadventure_ with speed sufficient to
please Phillips was making her way. Ships, or their smoky evidences,
made the time pass quickly. It was Good Friday, a great day for my
childhood in Kent, land of plum-pudding-dogs and monkey-tail trees, a
day when I heard, as indeed my elder companions had long foretold, the
church bells rung muffled; although I was disappointed in the purple
cassocks which, tradition fabled, would be worn by the choir on that
day. Lent (and Advent too for that matter) was solemn then and real,
outside of churches; and with Good Friday it appeared undeniable that
there had been done some thing at which Nature must go in mourning. The
three hours' service, like the watch that rang out the dying year and
rang in the new, was in every one's thought that we met; such ceremony
was not for nothing. The melancholy hymns of the season were more than
sung verses.

To-day, at least, we had hot-cross buns to our breakfast. So is the
Lord remembered in these years of discretion. The sailors had the day
to themselves.

Our course lay more or less east, and brought us a succession of glimpses
of shining cliffs and misty downs. Off Dover we saw both coasts at
once. In 1919 I hoped I had seen the last of that piece of France.
Running out of this strait into the North Sea under a shre