ounced
"backster"), a simple contrivance somewhat upon the principle of
snowshoes. When the proneness to slip off the unaccustomed foot has
been overcome, backstays are not so awkward as they look. A couple of
flat pieces of inch-thick wood, four inches wide by six long, with a
loop of leather defectively fastened for the insertion of the foot
went to make up the pair of "backsters" by whose assistance I
succeeded in traversing two miles of rough, loose shingle that
separates the southern and eastern edge of Lydd marsh from the sea.

The lighthouse stands on the farthest point, jutting into the sea,
and has at the right of it West Bay, and on the left East Bay. A
signboard on the top of a pole stuck in the shingle, almost within
hail of the lighthouse, announces the proximity of "The Pilot." "The
Pilot" is a small shanty run up on the shingle, and possessed of
accommodation about equal in extent to that afforded by the
residence of the Peggottys. Reminiscences of the well-known abode on
the beach at Yarmouth are further favoured, as we draw nearer, by
the appearance of the son of the house, who comes lounging out in a
pilot-cloth suit, with a telescope under his arm, and a smile of
welcome upon his bright, honest face. This must be Ham, who we find
occupies the responsible position of signalman at this station, and
frequently has the current of his life stirred by the appearance of
strange sail upon the horizon. Peggotty, his father, is the proprietor
of "The Pilot," which hostelry drives a more or less extensive trade
in malt liquor with the eight men constituting the garrison of a
neighbouring fort, supplemented by such stray customers as wind and
tide may bring in.

I made the acquaintance of the Peggotty family and was made free of
the cabin many years ago, in the dark winter time when the _Northfleet_
went down off Dungeness, and over three hundred passengers were lost.
All the coast was then alive with expectancy of some moment finding
the sea crowded with the bodies of the drowned. The nine days during
which, according to all experience at Dungeness, the sea might hold
its dead were past, and at any moment the resurrection might
commence. But it never came, and other theories had to be broached
to explain the unprecedented circumstance. The most generally
acceptable, because the most absolutely irrefragable, was that the
dead men and women had been carried away by an under-current out
into the Atlantic, and fo