but at low water is dotted with low, black timbers, and
that there are few more dangerous pieces of navigation in the world than
the passage up the mouth of the Thames on a wild night when a fierce
gale is blowing and the snow and sleet driving before it, obscuring the
guiding lights that mark the channels between the sands.

The _Bessy_--for so Ben Tripper had named his bawley, after his
favourite sister--was lying on the mud just above Leigh. A fishy smell
pervaded the air, for close by were the boiling-sheds, with their vast
heaps of white cockle-shells. These were dug by the cocklers either
from the sand at the end of the Canvey Island or on the Maplin Sands
somewhere off Shoebury.

The large boats often return deeply laden with them. On reaching Leigh
the cockles are thrown out in great heaps by the side of the creek,
where they are covered at each tide. Here they are left to clean
themselves, and to get rid of the sand they have taken in when
burrowing. Two or three days later they are carried up to the
boiling-houses and thrown into great coppers of boiling water. They open
at once, and the fish drop from the shells. The contents of the coppers
are passed through large meshed sieves, to allow the fish to pass
through and retain the shells, which go to add to the heaps outside.
These heaps would in time rival in size the cinder tips of the Midlands
were it not that there is a use for the shells. They make splendid lime,
and are sometimes taken away in barge-loads and carried to town, where
they are used instead of gravel in the parks, making, when crushed, the
whitest and tidiest of paths.

Before starting, Jack had put on a canvas jumper, leggings and high
boots, and was soon at work with his uncle, ankle-deep in the mud. The
bawleys are boats almost peculiar to Leigh, although a few hail from
Gravesend and the Medway. They are from thirty to forty-five feet long,
and are divided into three classes of from six to fifteen tons burden.
They are very broad in comparison to their length, some of them having a
beam of fifteen feet, and they carry their width almost to the stern,
which is square. This gives the boats a dumpy appearance, as they look
as if they had been cut short. They are half-decked, with a roomy
fo'castle and a well, where the fish are kept alive. They carry one
mast.

The peculiarity of their rig is that they have no boom to their
mainsail, which in shape somewhat resembles a barge-sail, and, li