xt morning; a berth, too, which you can reach as
at present sailing, and from which you can start again to-morrow; one
where there are no moorings of absent vessels to foul your anchor, and
where the wind will not blow right into your sleeping cabin when the
moonlight chills, and where the dust will not blind you from this lime
barge, or the blacks begrime you from that coal brig as you spread the
yellow butter on your morning tartine.

The interest felt in doing this feat well is increased by seeing how
watchfully those who are already berthed will eye the stranger, often
speaking by their looks, and always feeling "hope he won't come too near
_me_;" while the penalty on failure in the proceeding is heavy and sharp,
a smash of your spars, a hole in your side, or a sleepless night, or an
hour of cable-clearing to-morrow, or all of them; and certainly in
addition, the objurgations of every yachtsman within the threatened
circle.

Undoubtedly the most unpleasant result of bad management is to have
damaged any other man's boat; and I cannot but mention with the greatest
satisfaction, that after so often working my anchors--at least two
hundred times--and so many days of sailing in crowded ports and rivers,
on no one occasion did the Rob Roy even brush the paint off any other
vessel.

Not far from my yawl there was moored a fine old frigate, useless now for
war, but invaluable for peace--the "'Chichester' Training-ship for
homeless boys of London." It is for a class of lads utterly different
from those on the 'Worcester,' but they are English boys still, and every
Englishman ought to do something for English boys, if he cares for the
present or the future of England.

Pale and squalid, thin, heartless, and homeless, they were; but now,
ruddy in the river breeze, neat and clean, alert with energy, happy in
their wooden home, with a kind captain and smart officers to teach them,
life and stir around, fair prospects ahead, and a British seaman's honest
livelihood to be earned instead of the miserable puling beggardom of the
streets, or the horrid company of the prison cell; which, that they
should lie in the path of any child of our land, adrift on the rough tide
of time at ten years old, is a glaring shame to the millions of
sovereigns in bankers' books, and we shall have to answer heavily if we
let it be thus still longer. {14}

The burgee flag of the Canoe Club flew always (white with our paddle
across C C in cipher)