shot him, and he plunged into the depths, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. Night in the Gulf Stream is something which cannot be forgotten, but in the beauty of it there seems to be a quality of strangeness, a spell or enchantment such as lurks hidden within the lovely forest of a fairy tale. For a night and a day the ship sailed slowly across the Stream, and when she was in the very middle of it came a change. The second day brought a wild and flaring sunrise. Ragged clouds swept up from the south, at first one by one, then in masses, so that the whole sky became filled with them, and many squalls struck the ship. Soon all the sky was covered but one long jagged rift through which a slanting shaft of sunlight fell upon the waves, and made a narrow bar of silver gleaming against the dark horizon. The wind was fair, and under close-reefed sails Jolie Brise tore along upon her course. Then came a black squall which wiped out the last trace of sunlight, and struck the ship so hard that she could scarcely run before it. For a few moments one could not tell whether she would broach-to against her helm and perhaps be clean swept by the overtaking sea. But never yet had she failed her helmsman. Even now it seemed as if she were only waiting for the right moment, for suddenly, as she surged upon the crest of a great wave, with a splendid gesture she turned and tore away in safety dead before wind and sea. Safe, yes, but only so long as her helmsman did not fail her or falter in his steering. To steer at such a time must surely be as grand a task as comes to any man. Knowledge of his ship, keenness of vision, physical strength exerted to the utmost yet perfectly controlled, the knowledge that one slip or the hesitation of a second may bring everything to an end, the instant certainty with which every demand is answered and the extraordinary sense of mastery this is the inspiration which comes in times of danger to men who have learned in patience to love and understand the sea. In a gale, though a man may know the tense anxiety which is really fear, he will yet have a quiet mind when his whole being is concentrated upon a single purpose, the steering of his ship. With this squall the gale began in earnest, and Jolie Brise lay hove-to throughout that day and the following night. A heavy sea was running, but it was long and regular, and did not trouble the ship. Soon after sunrise a gleam of blue sky appeared upon the northern horizon and spread swiftly upwards, until upon the one hand was all clear sunlight and upon the other clouds and deep shadow. The southerly wind failed, and for a little while the ship lay rolling idly; but a hard white line was sweeping across the sea towards her from the north. Then the wind struck afresh, and she seemed to make a sudden leap from darkness into a blazing world of sunlight and spindrift. A savage Norther in the Gulf Stream is a grim experience, but when it leaps out as if from an ambush, to catch a southern gale unawares and to sweep it wholesale from the sea, it is surely one of the grandest sights in the world. Though the wind had changed of a sudden, the long seas still ran up from the south, and the north wind caught them on the flank, tore off the tops from them in sheets of spindrift, and soon raised another sea which ran crossways over them, rising in steep pinnacles of water and breaking at the meeting of the crests. The ship was already close reefed; there was nothing more to be done for her, so she lay heeled over until the water came shooting in through the scuppers as each wave passed under her, and trembling in all her fabric. A strong gale at sea is always a wonderful experience, but to realise it to the full a man must be in a small sailing vessel. Then he must fight, as men fought in old days, with simple weapons and at close quarters: not as men fight now using machinery and at a distance, whether in war or seafaring in enormous ships. In a little sailing vessel he fights in the open: there is no shelter for him, and a sailor fights all the better for it, for there is in him some primitive instinct which is aroused by the coming of a gale. There is a challenge in the rising of the wind and sea, and he must answer it. It is not only the turmoil which arouses him: he sees that the ship herself has joined in the battle. At other times a faithful servant, she has become a splendid comrade. He has armed her for the fight, and he glories in her strength and courage. Surely ships must have some living personality of their own. Such a thought may be against all reason, yet every sailor knows that he cannot work a ship or think of her except as an individual. He learns her ways, her likes and dislikes, her strength and her weakness; he knows just when he must let her take her own way and when she needs his guidance. In a gale of wind a time comes when the ship herself takes charge. As she lies hove-to she makes so little headway that the man at the helm can do little or nothing for her. So he must be content to watch, and then it is, most of all, that he learns to love his ship and marvels at her intelligence. Waves are not all alike, as some might think; in fact it is nearer the truth that no two successive waves meet a ship in just the same way. So one may watch her hour after hour, taking each as it comes, with a skill and wisdom which have come to her from generations must days with of seamen. It is the seaman who learns what a ship be, and so in former sailors built their ships their own hands, and it is still from sailors that the builders learn what the form of a ship should be. No one can feel that he really knows his ship until he has weathered out a gale in her, and in this Gulf Stream gale Jolie Brise proved herself once and for all. Even when a man has full trust in his ship he can never be really free from anxiety when a gale is blowing, for there is always the possibility that a chance sea may bring disaster. Fishermen talk of the "chance sea," the wave which does not run true with the others, but leaps suddenly upon the ship from another angle and catches her unawares. Sometimes when fishing smacks are caught in a gale of wind they lie hove-to hour after hour within sight of one another. From the crest of each wave as it sweeps by sails can be seen here and there, and when the smack sinks into the trough they are lost from view. Once more she rises, and now perhaps, where a sail has been a few moments before, there is nothing. With the chance sea the end comes of a sudden, in the passing of a wave. It is the unforeseen ending against which there is no guarding: something which can never be quite forgotten, no matter how well the ship may be weathering out the gale. A Norther in the Gulf Stream is often fierce and short, and in this gale the wind began to drop after about five hours. Then it is that the sea is most dangerous, for the waves become disorderly when they are no longer driven onwards by the wind. They run in all directions: pinnacles of water leap up and break at haphazard so that a ship can no longer take them in her stride. Short as the gale was it drove the ship far south of her course, so that when she could make sail again she had still the Stream to cross. Two more days she sailed with fair winds and fine weather, and then she sighted the low-lying coast of America, where Montauk Point marks the entrance to the Sound. With a gentle evening breeze she passed between the islands after fortyseven days at sea. Her six thousand mile voyage was over, and all that night she lay becalmed within the shelter of the land. THE BEACHCOMBER. BY HUMFREY JORDAN. standard of comfort which he recognised, and that the sticky heat of the climate would certainly affect his liver, annoyed him. "This treacle atmosphere of yours is really most unpleasant, Ryder," he announced. "I hope it's not against the rules to rouse the punkah wallah from slumber on the Sabbath?" 66 ON a Sunday morning in worked maxims that a white early December, shortly after man owed it to his dignity to eleven, Bolton, the Commis- be both comfortable and social sioner, first made acquaintance in the East. That Sin Byu with Davies, the beachcomber; fell far short of the minimum and as usual at that hour of that day the large, bare, dilapidated main room of the club was very empty. When Bung Ryder, the D.C., had brought the Commissioner over from his bungalow, Vincent, the police officer, had been the only occupant. Having passed the time of day, Vincent had gone on reading the illustrated papers that had arrived the night before; and Ryder and Bolton had forestalled later arrivals by helping themselves to such of the five-weeks-old periodicals as Vincent had not collected. Then Cruikshank had come in, gossiped for a few moments, and, seeing that the more interesting of the magazines and journals were in use, had turned to the bookcases in vain search for a readable novel which he did not already know by heart. Silence and dulness settled on the bare room. Bolton had arrived by the mail boat the afternoon before. He was new to the Division, and it was his first visit to Sin Byu. Much of his service had been spent in Rangoon, and the remainder in Upper Burma. It was one of his most hard Sorry," Bung Ryder apologised genially. "I hadn't noticed that the lazy devil had quit work." He shouted an order, and a squatting figure on the veranda roused itself and pulled at a cord. The pulleys of the cord squeaked loudly and jammed. The squatting figure raised protesting hands at the very usual occurrence, scrambled to its feet and disappeared in search of assistance. Bolton strongly condemned such haphazard methods and such indifferent management; but his attention was diverted from the considerations that Ryder ought to have rung a bell instead of shouting, and that the club secretary must be useless. From the hard glare of sunshine outside a small, hot, dishevelled, and excited man appeared. His body was indecently plump, globular like an egg; his legs were indecently spindled. His head was enormous, and long wisps of very white hair stuck out from beneath a pig-sticker topee, which he did not remove, and which appeared so ancient that its continued existence touched the miraculous. The little man's face presented an immediate problem to the observer, since it gave little information about his real age. His skin was strangely white, almost transparent, lined and wrinkled and furrowed, but without any of the parchment appearance of extreme old age; his eyes were alight with extreme animation and bright as a bird's. He was clean shaven, but not that morning; and his eyebrows were bushy and quite black. In spite of his eggshaped body and inadequate legs, he moved with great activity and a litheness that touched grace. His khaki shirt had a patch of a different shade on the right shoulder; his blue flannel shorts had been reseated with a grey material; his puttees were frayed and his hobnailed boots disreputable. He carried a doublebarrelled twelve-bore, and he appeared to have been taking violent exercise in the sun. Running briskly up the steps, this unusual little person clattered across the veranda, strode into the bare room, faced Vincent, and brought the butt of his gun down with a crash on the bare boards. "Loaded? Vincent asked, looking up without any sign of astonishment. "Am I a fool? the little man retorted. "I am not even a youthful and indolent official, humorously entrusted with the maintenance of the public peace. If you prefer to study illustrations of blonde beauties bathing instead of doing your job, is there any moral reason why I shouldn't fill with shot the backsides of the infernal thieves who defy your incompetent underlings and rob me openly. Is there ? Vincent put down his paper and smiled. "Beer is what you want,' he declared, pointing towards the bar. Come along and tell me what has happened now." He led the way into the next room, and the little man followed, cursing the police force with fluent imagery. Bolton was genuinely upset. "Good God, Ryder," he gasped, "it's not yet noon. Surely, even here, you don't allow this sort of thing. I do not care whether the man is drunk already or whether he is mad. Ladies might come in at any moment. It's vital that he should not be allowed to touch alcohol. Vincent should have more sense. I must insist on your doing something." "There's no need, really," Ryder laughed. "I doubt if he's ever been drunk in his life. He's Davies." And who the devil is |