face, I felt very sad for a moment. It looked like a very cruel world
for all of its present smiling. On this coast the elements seem always to
be waiting for their prey, just as, in the shelter of ledges deep beneath
our keel, unspeakable slimy things with wide glaucous eyes are lying in
watch, with tentacles outspread.

"It all seems very dreadful to me," I said.

But the old fellow, though he nodded civilly in assent, had not
understood me in the least. This was clearly the only world with
which he was acquainted; the one particular bit of earth whereupon
fate had dropped him, as fertilizing seeds are dropped by wandering
birds. I daresay he is unable to realize any other sort of existence,
excepting perhaps in some such vague way as you and I may think of
those canal-diggers of Mars. Close to us, to port, we passed a big rock
that was jutting from the water and over which the long smooth seas
washed, foaming with hissing sounds.

"He nigh ketched us, day I fetched doctor back to yer father," Sammy
informed me. "Ye mind t'were a bit rough that day, and ye couldn't tell
yer hand afore yer face, hardly, t'were that thick, and tide she'd drawed
us furder inshore 'n I mistrusted. The wind he were middlin' high an'
gusty, too. I don't mind many sich hard times a-makin' th' cove. We was
sure glad enough ter get in."

"I never thought of it in that way," I exclaimed. "It certainly was an
awful afternoon, and it must have been horribly dangerous."

"I telled 'un afore startin' as how t'were a bit of a job, an' he asks me
kin I make it, an' I says I expect I kin, like enough, wid luck. Then he
tells me ter think o' th' old woman an' th' children, an' I says it's all
right. Frenchy he were willin' too, so in course we started."

Then, perhaps for the first time, I took a real long look at that doctor,
who was sitting forward, perched on the head of a barrel. He was laughing
with Frenchy, and held the boy on his lap. I decided that he belongs to a
class that is familiar to us. You know his kind, Aunt Jennie, keen of
eye, full of quiet determination, and always moving forcibly, even if
slowly, towards success. We have seen lots of them on the football
fields, at Corinthian yacht races, wherever big chaps are contending and
care but little for the safety of their necks as long as they are playing
the game.

To me the strangest thing about this man is that he appears to be
thoroughly adapted to these surroundings, and yet w