and hubbub confounds the night, utterly destructive
of sleep. This chorus was in full cry about two o'clock A.M. Soon great
luggers came splashing along with shrieks from the crews, and sails
flapping, chains rattling, spars knocking about, as if a tempest were in
rage. Several of these lubberly craft smashed against the pier, and the
men screamed more wildly, and at length one larger and more inebriated
than all the rest, dashed in among the small boats where the Rob Roy
slept, and swooping down on the poor little yawl, then wrapt in calm
repose, she heeled us over on our beam-ends, and after fastening her
clumsy, rusty anchor in my mizen shrouds (which were of iron, and
declined to snap), she bore me and my boat away far off, ignominiously,
stern foremost.

Certainly this was by no means a pleasant foretaste of what might be
expected in the numerous other ports we were to enter, and, at any rate,
that night's sleep was gone. But in a voyage of this sort a night's
sleep must be resigned readily, and the loss is easily borne by trying to
forget it, which indeed you soon do when the sun rises, and a good cup of
tea has been quaffed, or, if that will not suffice, then another.

Vigorous health is at the bottom of the enthusiastic enjoyment of
yachting; but in a common sailor's life sleep is not a regular thing as
we have it on shore, and perhaps that staid glazy and sedate-looking eye,
which a hard-worked seaman usually has, is really caused by broken
slumber. He is never completely awake, but he is never entirely asleep.

Boulogne is a much more agreeable place to reside at than one might
suppose from merely passing through it. Once I spent a month there, and
found plenty to see and to do. Good walks, hotels, churches, and
swimming-baths; the river to row in, the reading-room to sit in, the
cliffs to climb, and the sands to see.

At Dover the dock-people had generously charged me "nil" for dues. I had
letters for France from the highest authorities to pass the Rob Roy as an
article entered for the Paris "Exhibition;" and when the _douane_ and
police functionaries came in proper state at Boulogne to appraise her
value, and to fill up the numerous forms, certificates, schedules, and
other columned documents, I had hours of walking to perform, and most
courteous and tedious attention to endure, and then paid for sanitary
dues, "two sous per ton," that was threepence. Finally, there was this
insurmountable diffic