of the
pier.

A heavy sea was running, and evidently with a strong undertow. When
Manasseh returned with the hot water, Captain Vyell announced that he
would bathe before taking his chocolate.

"Yo' Hon'ah will bathe befor' shaving?"

"You d----d fool, did you ever know me do _any_thing before shaving?"

Manasseh chose a razor, stropped it, and worked the shaving soap into a
lather.

"Beggin' yo' Hon'ah's pardon," said he, "it bein' de Lawd's Day, an'
these Port Nassau people dam' ig'orant--"

"Hand me the _peignoir_," commanded his master sharply.

He sat, and was shaved. Then, having sponged his chin, he ordered
Manasseh to lay out his bathing-dress, retire, find a back way to the
beach and, having opened all doors, attend him below. He indued himself
in his bathing-dress very deliberately, standing up for a minute stark
naked in the sunshine flooding through the open window--a splendid
figure, foretasting battle with the surf.

Then, having drawn on his bathing-dress and thrust his feet into
sand-shoes, he cast his dressing-gown again over him and went down the
stairs at a run. The doors stood open, and on the beach the negro
awaited him in the right attitude of "attention." To him he tossed his
wrap and shoes, and ran down to the beach as might swift-footed Achilles
have run to be clasped by the Sea-Goddess his mother.

Through the shallow wavelets he ran, stepping high and delicately
splashing merry drops against the morning sunlight, leaped over one or
two that would have "tilled" him to the knee (to use an old boyish
phrase learnt at Carwithiel where he had learnt to swim), and came to
the shelf beyond which the first tall comber boomed towards him, more
than head high, hissing along its ridge. There, as it overarched him,
he launched his body forward and shot through the transparent green,
emerging beyond the white smother with a thrill and a laugh of sheer
physical delight. Thrice he repeated this,--

"Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,
Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. . ."

passed the fourth wave, gained deep water, and thrust out to sea with a
steady breast-stroke, his eyes all the while on the great embracing
flood which, stretch as it might from here to Europe, for the moment he
commanded.

Manasseh watched him from the beach. From the cliff above two
scandalised householders calling to one another across their gardens'
boundary pointed seaward and summone