r pleasant nor unpleasant, which reminded you of
something so deep in the memory that you could not give it a name. But it
was sound and good. Beyond that dry flat the smooth mud glistened as if
earth were growing a new skin, which yet was very tender. It was spongy,
but it did not break when I trod on it, though the earth complained as I
went. It was thinly sprinkled with a plant like little fingers of green
glass, the maritime samphire, and in the distance this samphire gave the
marsh a sheen of continuous and vivid emerald.

The saltings looked level and unbroken. But on walking seaward I was
continually surprised by drainage channels. These channels serpentined
everywhere, and were deep and wide. Sometimes they contained nothing but
silt, and sometimes they were salt-water rivers. I came upon each canyon
unexpectedly. The first warning was a sudden eruption from it, a flock of
dunlin, a flock which then passed seawards in a regimented flight that
was an alternate flash of light and a swift shadow. Dunlin, curlew,
oyster-catchers, or gulls, left a gully just before I knew I was headed
off again. In one of these creeks, however, the birds left me more than
their delicate footprints to examine. They left there a small craft whose
mast I had long taken to be a stump projecting from the mud. A young man
in a brown beard, a brown shirt, and a pair of khaki trousers was sitting
on its skylight. He hailed, and showed me how I could get to him without
sinking up to more than the knees in this dreary spot.

"Stay here if you like," he said, when I was with him. "When the tide is
full I'll pull you round to the village." It was a little cutter of about
fifteen tons, moored to the last huge links of a cable, the rest of which
had long been covered up. I thought he was making holiday in a novel
way. "No," he replied, "I'm living here."

It seems (I am but paraphrasing his apology) that he returned from
Cambrai, bringing back from France, as a young officer, some wounds and
other decorations, but also his youthful credulity and a remembrance of
society's noble promises to its young saviours. But not long after his
return to us the sight of us made him feel disappointed. He "stuck it,"
he said, as long as he could. But the more he observed us the worse he
felt. That was why he gave up a good position a second time on our
account. "What was the good of the money? The profiteers took most of it.
I worked hard, and had to give up wh