old man did not dare to venture across. I did not
care much, for I enjoyed playing with his grandson, and soon learned
their language. After a time the quarrelling ceased, and the old man
landed me on my own side."

"That is interesting. I only wish the old fisherman was here now with
his skiff, for there is no village in sight and no skiff to be seen, so
how we are to get over I cannot tell,--swimming being impossible and
wings out of the question."

"Ay, except in the case of fish and birds," observed Maikar.

"True, and as we are neither fish nor birds," rejoined the captain,
"what is to be done?"

"We must find a skiff," said the prince.

"Good, but where?"

"On the other side of yon bluff cape," replied Bladud. "It was there
that my friend the old fisherman lived. Mayhap he may live there
still."

Pushing on along shore they passed the bold cape referred to, and there,
sure enough, they found the old man's hut, and the old man himself was
seated on a boulder outside enjoying the sunshine.

Great was his surprise on seeing the three strangers approach, but
greater was his joy on learning that the biggest of the three was the
boy whom he had succoured many years before.

After the first greetings were over, Bladud asked if he and his friends
could be taken across in a skiff.

The old man shook his head.

"All that I possess," he said, "you are welcome to, but my skiff is not
here, and if it was I am too old to manage it now. My son, your old
companion, has had it away these two days, and I don't expect him home
till to-morrow. But you can rest in my poor hut till he comes."

As there seemed nothing better to be done, the travellers agreed to
this. Next day the son arrived, but was so changed in appearance, that
Bladud would not have recognised his old playmate had not his father
called him by name.

The skiff, although primitive and rude in its construction, was
comparatively large, and a considerable advance on the dug-outs, or
wooden canoes, and the skin coracles of the period. It had a square or
lug-sail, and was steered by a rudder.

"My son is a strange man," remarked the old fisherman, as the party
sauntered down to the shore, up which the skiff had been dragged. "He
invented that skiff as well as made it, and the curious little thing
behind that steers it."

"Able and strange men seem to work their minds in the same way,"
returned Bladud; "for the thing is not altogether new. I h