heir bluff bows rises in a wave nearly to the deck, and then swoops
in a sweeping curve to the rear.

The current by the port runs back on the wharf side towards its source,
and the foam drifts up the river instead of down. Green flags on a
sandbank far out in the stream, their roots covered and their bent tips
only visible, now swing with the water and now heel over with the
breeze. The _Edwin and Angelina_ lies at anchor, waiting to be warped
into her berth, her sails furled, her green painted water-barrel lashed
by the stern, her tiller idle after the long and toilsome voyage from
Rochester.

For there are perils of the deep even to those who only go down to it in
barges. Barge as she is, she is not without a certain beauty, and a
certain interest, inseparable from all that has received the buffet of
the salt water, and over which the salt spray has flown. Barge too, as
she is, she bears her part in the commerce of the world. The very
architecture on the shore is old-fashioned where these bluff-bowed
vessels come, narrow streets and overhanging houses, boat anchors in the
windows, sails and tarry ropes; and is there not a Row Barge Inn
somewhere?

"Hoy, ahoy!"

The sudden shout startles me, and, glancing round, I find an empty black
barge, high out of the water, floating helplessly down upon me with the
stream. Noiselessly the great hulk had drifted upon me; as it came the
light glinted on the wavelets before the bow, quick points of brilliant
light. But two strokes with the sculls carried me out of the way.

NUTTY AUTUMN

There is some honeysuckle still flowering at the tops of the hedges,
where in the morning gossamer lies like a dewy net. The gossamer is a
sign both of approaching autumn and, exactly at the opposite season of
the year, of approaching spring. It stretches from pole to pole, and
bough to bough, in the copses in February, as the lark sings. It covers
the furze, and lies along the hedge-tops in September, as the lark,
after a short or partial silence, occasionally sings again.

But the honeysuckle does not flower so finely as the first time; there
is more red (the unopened petal) than white, and beneath, lower down the
stalk, are the red berries, the fruit of the former bloom. Yellow weed,
or ragwort, covers some fields almost as thickly as buttercups in
summer, but it lacks the rich colour of the buttercup. Some knotty
knapweeds stay in out-of-the-way places, where the scythe has not