like a Polyphemus pursuing Acis, while along
the shore the bathing-machine proprietor dashes
to and fro on his pony as if perpetually rushing
off for the lifeboat. A large concourse on the
pier head watch with interest the fat struggler
with the elements, while a resolute angler is
fishing stolidly for haddock, as if he was never
to have a meal unless he drew it from the
sea.

There is one quiet amusement always in
fashion at Scarcliff. In fact, it is not so much
the custom as the religion of this and other
sea-side places. You sit down facing the
sea, and look steadily seaward till you get
giddy and sleepy; you then walk long enough
to clear yourself from this feeling, and then
sit down and stare vacantly again. Red-faced
farmers, bilious business men, pink school-girls,
yellow old country-women in poke bonnets,
and young dandies—every one does it. Most
of these contemplators must exhaust the sea
(mentally I mean) in three minutes. They
observe it is blue, level, with sunny gleams upon
it here and there, while some white-winged
gulls flicker over it like large white butterflies;
they know that it has illimitable power
of getting angry, and in its wrath of devouring
men, and there they end, but still magnetised
by its irresistible fascination, they sit there
day after day as if they were trying to write
something to cut out Byron's Address to the
Ocean. The custom may tend slightly to
idiotcy, but in other respects it is a rational
and healthy custom enough.

As I walk round by the castle cliff, where
the big gun from Sebastopol is, I find an
old lame fisherman leaning there and gazing
wistfully seaward. I ask him if that is a
collier out yonder. He says yes, with an air
of surprise at any landsman knowing a collier
so far off. I explain to him I mean the vessel
out there by the pier (five miles nearer than
where he means). He shifts his quid grimly
and scornfully, at this. He meant that speck
out ever so far. I try, but I can't see it at all,
and go down to zero at once in my own
estimation. I ask my mariner (to carry the thing
off), if it is a good day for fishing. Never
was a better, he says: would I like his boat?
He's got plenty of bait ready. The day was
fine, with a little white feather on the sea,
the breakers were crashing along the shore.
It might be a good day for a strong constitution,
but not for me. Since that I have had
reason to suspect it was not so good a day, for
the day after I asked the same question. The
wind was then furious, raging, demoniacally
spiteful in the matter of chimney-pot hats.
I was then also informed it was a first-rate
day, and safe for mackerel. A third day it
rained violently. Even that day, too, was
pronounced perfect. Now, as they could not all
be perfect, I am inclined to think that not one
of them was, and that if Youth had been at
the prow, Nausea would certainly have been at
the helm. Look! There are Mouther's set
going out now, all in yachting dress; it's a show
off Crowther's people say, and they always
come back ill. Do you hear that crash? That
is thunder. The Mouthers will just have got
comfortably out at sea. Serve them right,
growls Crowther, who is what his friends call
a plain sort of man; but though I esteem him,
I must confess that, for my own part, I set
him down as decidedly ugly.

Bathing! There again, those Mouther people,
who break every law human and divine, troop off
smirking and philandering almost directly after
breakfast, when everybody knows it is as much
as one's life is worth to bathe within two hours
of a meal. Every one at Crowther's expects
that some day the whole Mouther lot will go off
in simultaneous apoplexy. They dabble and
shiver about, but I'll just give you an idea of
how they suffer. The other day I went to bathe
and had to wait till an invisible gentleman in
No. 32 had done dressing. I waited for an
endless time; at last the bathing man says,
"I think I'd knock, sir," so I did, and a feeble,
wavering voice answered, "In a moment."
Presently the door slowly opened, and a blue
shivering jelly of a woe-begone man, looking
the image of alarm and nervousness, stammeringly
articulated, "Would you be kind enough
to button my braces, sir; my hands are so
benumbed, I've been half an hour trying to do
them." I saw that man afterwards on the
Terrace slinking home to Mouther's. He was
never his own man again, and after all he
went off (just like Mouther's people) without
paying for his last six bathing tickets. Now
improper bathing may benumb a man, but it
doesn't, you know, make a man forget to pay
for his bathing tickets.

The Crowther set are jolly, hearty, honest,
rather vulgar people. They dress any how,
and dispute a good deal about cloth and
iron, praise Hoodersfield and Braaaardford,
and hate fuss, sham, and pretension. Their
wives are generally rather full-faced, hard,
sturdy women, who speak their minds; and
their daughters are hearty, pretty, strong,
good-natured girls, who laugh loud and sing
loud, and walk fast and far, and delight in
boating, and do not try to conceal their likes
and dislikes. They are not afraid to show they
enjoy themselves, they are fresh and natural,
and have no affectation. The Crowther men
are very hearty and sociable, and are, as a rule,
generally meeting friends from "Hool," wherever
you go with them.

What a stupendous fool I am! Here I have
been afraid to bathe for a whole week because
of the cold, and I declare if the water isn't
delightfully fresh, and without a sting.

"Always is warm, sir, after the night's been
rough," says the machine proprietor.

I long to know the scientific reason for
this phenomenon, but like a fool again I am
ashamed to ask, so I say, "I suppose so," which
veils my ignorance. I presume the sea beats
itself warm just as a cabman warms his hands
by striking himself on the chest, and yet that
hardly seems to bring one much nearer to an
adequate explanation.