eally done, and
the waiters have brought in the relays of brandered chickens and
fresh-caught salmon, which mine host, who has had some experience of his
customers, has most liberally provided--they set to work in earnest.
They have been only politely trifling hitherto with the wing of a fowl
or so, to keep the ladies company. But now, as old Captain Phillips, at
the head of the table, cuts a slice and a joke alternately, and the
Tiger at the bottom begins to let out his carnivorous propensities, one
gets to have an idea what breakfast means. "Let me advise you, my dear
Mr Dawson--as a friend--you'll excuse an old stager--if you have no
particular wish to starve yourself--you've had nothing yet but two cups
of tea--to help yourself, and let your neighbours do the same. You may
keep on cutting Vauxhall shavings for those three young Lloyds till
Michaelmas; pass the ham down to them, and hand me those devilled
kidneys."

"Tea? no; thank you; I took a cup yesterday, and haven't been myself
since. Waiter! don't you see this tankard's empty?"

"Consume you, Dick Phillips! I left two birds in that pie five minutes
back, and you've cleared it out!"

"Diawl, John Jones, I was a fool to look into a tankard after you!"

Everything has an end, and so the breakfast had at last; and we followed
the ladies to the terrace to watch the sailing for the ladies' challenge
cup. By the help of a glass we could see three yachts, with about half a
mile between each, endeavouring to get round a small boat with a man and
a flag in it, which, as the wind was about the worst they could have had
for the purpose, seemed no easy matter. There was no great interest in
straining one's eyes after them, so I found out the Phillipses, and
having told Dawson, who was escorting Clara, that Hanmer was looking for
him to make out the list of "the eleven," I was very sorry indeed when
the sound of a gun announced that the Hon. H. Chouser's Firefly had won
the cup, and that the other two yachts might be expected in the course
of half an hour. Nobody waited for them, of course. The herring-boats,
after a considerable deal of what I concluded from the emphasis to be
swearing in Welsh, in which, however, Captain Phillips, who was umpire,
seemed to have decidedly the advantage in variety of terms and power of
voice, were pronounced "ready," and started by gun-fire accordingly. A
rare start they made of it. The great ambition of every man among them
seemed to b