Coxen, like Dogberry, prides himself on
"having had losses." If right was right, and all
things was as they should be, which they ain't,
Coxen would be, by his own account, the lord
of half Dippington. If you ask him how all
these enormous territories passed from the family
of Coxen, he will tell you, with a grave shake
of the head, " that it was all the want of laming"
that got it all "signed away." There
cannot be the smallest doubt that Coxen's (let
me see) uncle's father— no, aunt's sister— no
— yes— father's uncle's mother— was descended
from two East Indian captens, Capten Mover
and Capten Redwood, which came to Dippington
to moor quietly, and left their property tied
up by the most solemn, oaths and specific directions
to the Coxen family to descend lineally
and inalienably. There can be no doubt about
this, because Coxen knows where to lay his hand
on the house in Dippington. whose best room
contains a portrait of Captain Redwood in an
oval gilt frame, and laying his hand on a
terrestrial globe; and, moreover, the captains
lie together under a flat black stone just as
you enter to the right of St. Lawrence's
church; and not only that, sir, there is, or was,
in the same church a glass case, through which
you see the worthy captain's will, leaving so
much bread and meat to certain inhabitants of
St. Lawrence's parish. And if anything else was
wanted, there was a pilot as died last June was
a twelvemonth, as told him (John Coxen) over a
glass of rum and a pipe in the parlour of the
Tartar Frigate Inn, that there was parties who
could speak about that 'ere pier property if they
had a mind; and, what was more, he (Coxen) had
seen maps of the property which covered the
site of the present Exmouth Crescent, and all the
ground where the pier now stood. How the
alienation occurred, no one could see, but all he
knew was, that there was an uncle of his who
always knew what lawyer to go to for a pound,
and I suppose he was told that the site of
certain property could not be secured without him,
and lhat it was of no consequence, and
"sich-like," and so it went, all through "a want of
laming," in a certain drunken branch of the
Coxen family, who, if "right was right," ought
to be gen'lemen.

On a morning misty with intense heat, I and
Parkins stroll down to the Pier-gate by
appointment, to meet Coxen, and take a row
and sail up the Sour river towards Shinglewich.
The machines are all down on the beach,
like an encampment of Tartar gipsies in an
inundated steppe— a cutter with sunburnt sail
is passing, dark in shadow. The bathers are
bobbing up and down like floats fidgeting
under a nibble. The delicious emerald water
is rumbling in, and frothing and splashing about
the scarlet wheels of the machines, and rolling
in froth on the shore, as if white soapsuds were
being swilled out. Redgauntlet sort of
amphibia, in flaming plush breeches and bare
feet, are riding on draggle-tailed horses at a
merry trot knee-deep into the sea, to link to the
machines, whose open doors announce their
ripeness for return to land. A fop in Tweed
suit has just loafed by with an umbrella up—
frightful example of a nervous and debilitated
age. Children are grubbing about in buff
slippers and with wooden spades, as if to be a
"navvy" or a gold-digger were the natural object
of every man. The shore, rolled brown, level,
and hard by the sea-mangle, is strewn with little
green films and scarlet roots and purple shreds
of seaweed, and here and there are piled with
strips of parchment-looking fucus and bladdered
tea-leaves-looking refuse of the waves. The
green light on the pier, that looked last night so
spectral in the gloom, is invisible; the distant
Knock Sand and the North Foreland have no
star lit. There is a fretted sparkle on the
waves, and on the rolling crest ot the surf there
is a glow as of gold plate. The bathing-women
are floating out like Norse witches wading out
to curse a departing vessel and fling a foul
wind on its track, as the falconer whistles his
Peregrine after a. flying heron out on the cliff.
The flowers sway and nod, and mock at the
danger, and the lark sings above the barley that
rolls in glosses, like the wind over an animal's fur.

Now we pass down the pier, passing the
shipwrights busy with their heavy hammers,
boiling tar, and caulking, and piecing the ship's
skeleton in the dry dock; the old boatmen with
red button-holes of eyes and worn-out
telescopes; the boys playing in boats; the life-boat,
with its padded-looking sides; the floating
shells of boats, like empty green pea-cods; the
huge buoys of the Trinity House, looking like floats
used by giants, or enormous iron fungi— and
we are in Coxen's boat, stepping by a ship-boy
of dandy habits, who is washing his shoes and
bare legs with a stray cabbage-leaf.

We are in, past the keen-edged steamers, the
yachts and pleasure-boats, and the dense,
wedging sound of the shipwrights' hammers;
past the cranes and clicking capstans and water-
steps, and dredging-machines, and sluices, and
great black and white diamond buoys that tell
strange vessels silent tidings of the depth of
water in the harbour.

We are off. There has been a scrambling out
of oars, a hauling of ropes, an unbending of
sails. We skim round the fort-like angle of the
pier, with its massy stonework and its
green-slimed and barnacle-crusted bulwarks, and are
out at sea. The nor'-west catches the sail and
strains it out; we leap and dance over the
luminous water, which seems like so much
opaque sunshine— yesterday's sunshine in fact
— faster than those white-tipped, omega-shaped
gulls that float questioning round our little red
thread of a flag. The boat drives like a
steam-plough through a trough of the waves, or dips
down on one side till the gunwale nearly lips
the tide. A boat lagging along slowly in the
opposite direction, looks at us admiringly, and
one of the sailors in it hums something. " What
did he say, Coxen?"

"Only a wevse of a hold song," smiles Coxen
— " ' Oh, scudding under easy sail,'— and we was
scudding just then, sir, like flying Isaac, as they