has eaten up; and here it is that I come to the Looe
Stream. The Looe Stream is a little dell that used to run through the
park, and which to-day,--right out at sea, furnishes the only gate by
which ships can pass through the great maze of banks and rocks which go
right out to sea from Selsey Bill, miles and miles, and are called the
Owers.

On the chart that district is still called "The Park," and at very low
tides stumps of the old trees can be seen; and for myself I believe,
though I don't think it can be proved, that in among the masses of sand
and shingle which go together to make the confused dangers of the Owers,
you would find the walls of Roman palaces, and heads of bronze and
marble, and fragments of mosaic and coins of gold.

The tide coming up from the Channel finds, rising straight out of the
bottom of the sea, the shelf of this old land, and it has no avenue by
which to pour through save this Looe Stream, which therefore bubbles and
runs like a mill-race, though it is in the middle of the sea.

If you did not know what was underneath you, you could not understand
why this river should run separate from the sea all round, but when you
have noticed the depths on the chart, you see a kind of picture in your
mind: the wall of that old mass of land standing feet above the floor of
the Channel, and the top of what was once its fields and its villas, and
its great church almost awash at low tides, and through it a cleft,
which was, I say, a dell in the old park, but is now that Looe Stream
buoyed up on either side, and making a river by itself running in the
sea.

Sailing over it, and remembering all these things at evening, I got out
of the boil and tumble into deep water. It got darker, and the light on
the _Nab_ ship showed clearly a long way off, and purple against the
west stood the solemn height of the island. I set a course for this
light, being alone at the tiller, while my two companions slept down
below. When the night was full the little variable air freshened into a
breeze from the south-east; it grew stronger and stronger, and lifted
little hearty following seas, and blowing on my quarter drove me
quickly to the west, whither I was bound. The night was very warm and
very silent, although little patches of foam murmured perpetually, and
though the wind could be heard lightly in the weather shrouds.

The star Jupiter shone brightly just above my wake, and over Selsey
Bill, through a flat band of