ramble down as
best they could. John picked up his coat, and I held it by the collar
while he slipped his arms through the arm-holes and drew it on.

When he flung the coat aside I noticed a peculiarity of the collar as it
fell and lay upon the ground. While the waist and all the lower part was
limp, the collar preserved an unnatural stiffness--a stiffness that
extended to the breast; this part stood up as if within it there were
some invisible form. Several times as I turned to assist the lady whose
turn came next I noticed this peculiarity; and when I held the collar to
help the Honourable John into this fashionable frock-coat, there was a
hardness about it which made me wonder whether his tailor had stitched
into it several strips of buckram, or cleverly inserted beneath the
collar, and down the breast, a piece of flexible whalebone. Whatever it
was that gave this part of his coat its rigidity, I dismissed it from my
mind with the thought that the Honourable John was a greater fop than
either Syd or I supposed.

Bareheaded he went to bid his cousin good-bye. We also shook the
captain's hand, and expressed our regret, with John, at the misfortune
which had befallen him because of the deflection of the compass. We were
the last to leave by the rope-ladder, handing down our portmanteaux
before we descended ourselves; and the captain waved his hand to us from
the bows before we vanished into the mist. The heavy luggage would have
to wait until the steamer floated off with the next tide, and made her
way round to Penzance; but negotiations had begun before we left for the
conveyance of the mails in time to catch the up train, by which we also
intended travelling to London.

John recovered his hat, and we pushed through the yielding shell beach,
preceded by our improvised porters, to the broken ramparts of Treryn
Dinas; these we climbed, and made our way across the fields to the
village of Treryn; and here we hired a trap, which ran us into Penzance
in time to discuss a good dinner before we started on our journey by
rail.

We were well on the way to Plymouth, and I was reading a newspaper of
the day before, when a curious paragraph caught my eye.

"Listen to this!" said I to the other two, and I read: "'It has
frequently happened that ships have got out of their course at sea by
some unaccountable means, and a warning just issued by the Admiralty may
perhaps have some bearing on the matter. Their Lordships say that t