not have told me more of the state of things
aboard than I knew.

The famous chapter was all but begun
now, and would have been quite begun, but
for the wind. It was blowing stiffly from
the east, and it rumbled in the chimney and
shook the house. That was not much; but,
looking out into the wind's grey eye for
inspiration, I laid down my pen again to
make the remark to myself, how emphatically
everything by the sea declares that it has a
great concern in the state of the wind. The
trees blown all one way; the defences of the
harbor reared highest and strongest against
the raging point; the shingle flung up on the
beach from the same direction; the number of
arrows pointed at the common enemy; the
sea tumbling in and rushing towards them
as if it were inflamed by the sight. This put
it in my head that I really ought to go out
and take a walk in the wind; so, I gave up the
magnificent chapter for that day, entirely
persuading myself that I was under a moral
obligation to have a blow.

I had a good one, and that on the high
road—the very high road—on the top of the
cliffs, where I met the stage-coach with all
the outsides holding their hats on and
themselves too, and overtook a flock of sheep with
the wool about their necks blown into such
great ruffs that they looked like fleecy owls.
The wind played upon the lighthouse as if it
were a great whistle, the spray was driven
over the sea in a cloud of haze, the ships
rolled and pitched heavily, and at intervals
long slants and flaws of light made mountain-
steeps of communication between the ocean
and the sky. A walk of ten miles brought
me to a seaside town without a cliff, which,
like the town I had come from, was out of the
season too. Half of the houses were shut up;
half of the other half were to let; the town
might have done as much business as it was
doing then, if it had been at the bottom of
the sea. Nobody seemed to flourish save the
attorney; his clerk's pen was going in the
bow-window of his wooden house; his
brass door-plate alone was free from salt,
and had been polished up that morning. On
the beach, among the rough luggers and
capstans, groups of storm-beaten boatmen,
like a sort of marine monsters, watched
under the lee of those objects, or stood leaning
forward against the wind, looking out through
battered red spy-glasses. The parlor bell in the
Admiral Benbow had grown so flat with
being out of the season, that neither could I
hear it ring when I pulled the handle for
lunch, nor could the young woman in black
stockings and strong shoes, who acted ais
waiter out of the season, until it had been
tinkled three times.

Admiral Benbow's cheese was out of the
season, but his home-made bread was good,
and his beer was perfect. Deluded by some
earlier spring day which had been warm
and sunny, the Admiral had cleared the firing
out of his parlor stove, and had put some
flower-pots—which was amiable and hopeful
in the Admiral, but not judicious: the room
being, at that present visiting, transcendantly
cold. I therefore took the liberty of peeping
out across a little stone passage into the
Admiral's kitchen, and, seeing a high settle
with its back towards me drawn out in
front of the Admiral's kitchen fire, I strolled
in, bread and cheese in hand, munching and
looking about. One landsman and two boatmen
were seated on the settle, smoking pipes and
drinking beer out of thick pint crockery mugs—
mugs peculiar to such places, with parti-
coloured rings round them, and ornaments
between the rings like frayed-out roots. The
landsman was relating his experience, as yet
only three nights' old, of a fearful running-
down case in the Channel, and therein
presented to my imagination a sound of music
that it will not soon forget.

"At that identical moment of time," said
he (he was a prosy man by nature, who rose
with his subject), " the night being light and
calm, but with a grey mist upon the water
that didn't seem to spread for more than two
or three mile, I was walking up and down
the wooden causeway next the pier, off where
it happened, along with a friend of mine,
which his name is Mr. Clocker. Mr. Clocker
is a grocer over yonder." (From the direction
in which he pointed the bowl of his pipe, I
might have judged Mr. Clocker to be a Merman,
established in the grocery trade in five-
and-twenty fathoms of water.) "We were
smoking our pipes, and walking up and down
the causeway, talking of one thing and talking
of another. We were quite alone there,
except that a few hovellers" (the Kentish
name for long-shore boatmen like his com-
panions) "were hanging about their lugs,
waiting while the tide made, as hovellers
will." (One of the two boatmen, thoughtfully
regarding me, shut up one eye; this I understood
to mean: firstly, that he took me into
the conversation: secondly, that he confirmed
the proposition: thirdly, that he announced
himself as a hoveller.) "All of a sudden
Mr. Clocker and me stood rooted to the spot,
by hearing a sound come through the stillness,
right over the sea, like a great sorrowful
flute or Æeolian harp. We didn't in the least
know what it was, and judge of our surprise
when we saw the hovellers, to a man, leap
into the boats and tear about to hoist sail and
get off, as if they had every one of 'em gone,
in a moment, raving mad! But they knew
it was the cry of distress from the sinking
emigrant ship."

When I got back to my watering-place out
of the season, and had done my twenty miles
in good style, I found that the celebrated
Black Mesmerist intended favoring the public
that evening in the Hall of the Muses, which
he had engaged for the purpose. After a
good dinner, seated by the fire in an easy
chair, I began to waver in a design I had