bled the dingey to top the sharpest wave,
and I often forgot my steering while turning round to watch the little
creature as she nimbly leaped over the tumbling billows. The weather got
worse, therefore we changed for a storm-mizen, and so many seas broke
heavily over the Rob Roy, that the water in the well washed about my
ankles, and finally we were compelled to give in and lie-to for an hour
or more, after manning the pump.

This wind, rain, and sea together were the worst we had met with, but the
yawl seemed in high spirits, like her owner; though the waves in the
tide-way were sometimes so short and sharp that it was impossible to rise
and fall fast enough, and she often buried deeply. It was here that my
chart was so wet that it melted before my eyes, even with all endeavours
to preserve it, and therefore I bore up for Brading Harbour, in the Isle
of Wight, and somehow managed to get round Bembridge reef all safe into
the quiet lake beyond.

Here, and on British soil again, was an end to all expected anxieties of
the summer's voyage. The rest to come were to be met, but not
anticipated. There had been first the goal of Paris to be reached at a
certain time for the Regatta there, and then there was the unknown voyage
over the Channel, homeward bound; but henceforth no more dates or wide
seas had to be thought of, and the rest of the vacation was free.

The shores and seas about the Isle of Wight looked more cheerful and
lovely than ever, with a fair day next morning. Here we soon pass one of
the new sea-batteries, a huge granite castle, reminding one of Bomarsund,
but unfinished, and with scaffolds round that are worked or stopped, as
Ministries go out or in, and as guns or iron plates are proved strongest
in turn at Shoeburyness.

Portsmouth is in front, always with moving life on the waves. A squadron
of ironclads presses heavy on the water at Spithead, and among them
conspicuous is the five-masted Minotaur. White-winged yachts glide
through the blue space between these and Ryde. Osborne basks in the
sunshine with the "sailor Prince's" pleasure-boat by the shore. If there
be a gap or two in the horizon it is soon filled up by some rich laden
merchantman, with sails swelling full in the light, and gay signal flags
flowing out bright colours; and all the scene is woven together, as it
were, by swift steamers flitting to and fro like shuttles strung with a
thread of foam across a warp of blue.

But it i