ound out. The happy life aboard had almost enchained
me, but still I left the yawl at Dover, and ran up to London for the
annual inspection of the London Scottish Volunteers; and having led his
fine company of kilted Riflemen through Hyde Park, the Captain sheathed
his claymore to handle the tiller again, eager for the voyage.

The new rough hairy ropes had chafed my hands abundantly, and they were
red and black, and blistered, and swollen, and variously adorned by cuts,
and bruises, and scars. When shall I ever get gloves on again, or be fit
to appear at a dinner-table? These wounds, however, had taught me this
lesson, "Do every act deliberately. Hasty smartness is slowest. When
each single thing from morning to night has to be done by your own
fingers, save them from bruises and chafes. Nothing is worse spent than
needless muscular action. You will want every atom you have some day or
other this week. Husband vital force."

The Sappho schooner was at Dover, and her owner, Mr. Lawton, one of the
Canoe Club, took leave of the Rob Roy, and sailed away to Iceland, while
I started for Boulogne in the dawn, when all the scene around looked like
a woodcut, pale and colourless, as I cooked hot breakfast at five
o'clock. Nothing particular happened in this voyage across the Channel.
It was simply a very pleasant sail, in a very fine day, and in a good
little boat. The sight of both shores at once, when you are in the
widest part of a passage, deprives it immediately of the romance and
interest of being entirely out of sight of land and ships, and all else
but water, and so there is absent that deeper stir of feeling which
powerfully seized me in the wider traverse afterwards from Havre to
Cowes.

Indeed, when you know the under-water geography of the channel near
Dover, it is impossible not to feel that you are sailing over shallow
waves; for though they seem to be deep and grand enough from Dover Castle
or the Boulogne heights, the whole way might almost be spanned by piers
and arches, and if you wished to walk over dry shod at the low
spring-tide, you need only lay from shore to shore a twenty miles' slice
of undulated ground cut from the environs of London. The cellars of the
houses would be at the bottom of the sea, but the chimney-pots would
still be above it for stepping-stones.

The wind fell as we neared France, and a fog came on, and the tide
carried us off in a wrong direction north to Cape Grisnez, whe