rising--or not. He was independent of Science. A trifle of wind in
the night was his verdict, glass or no! The season was drawing nigh
to a close now for a bathing-resort, as you might say. Come another
se'nnight, you wouldn't see a machine down, as like as not. But you
could never say, to a nicety. He'd known every lodging in the old town
full, times and again, to the end of September month, before now. But
this year was going to fall early, and your young lady would lose her
swimming.

"She's a rare lass, too, for the water," he concluded, without any
consciousness of familiarity in the change of phrase. "Not that I know
much myself, touching swimming and the like. For I can't swim myself,
never a stroke."

"That's strange, too, for a seaman," said Fenwick.

"No, sir! Not so strange as you might think it. You ask up and down
among we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never
studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit
of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in
mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown,
end on, or have to fight for it, like it or no?"

"Drown! The sooner the better." Fenwick has no doubt about the matter.

"Why, sure! So I say, master. And I've put no encouragement on young
Benjamin, over yonder, to give study to the learning of it, for the
same reason. And not a stroke can he swim, any more than his father."

"Well! I can't swim myself, so there's three of us!" said Fenwick. "My
daughter swims enough for the lot." It gave him such pleasure to speak
thus of Sally boldly, where there need be no exact definition of their
kinship. The net-mender pursued the subject with the kind of gravity
on him that always comes on a seaman when drowning is under discussion.

"She's a rare one, for sure. Never but three, or may be fower, have
I seen in my time to come anigh to her--man nor woman. The best swimmer
a long way I've known--Peter Burtenshaw by name--I helped bring to
after drowning. He'd swum--at a guess--the best part of six hours
afower we heard the cry of him on our boat. Too late a bit we were,
but we found him, just stone-dead like, and brought him round. It was
what Peter said of that six hours put me off of letting 'em larn yoong
Benjamin to swim when he was a yoongster. And when he got to years of
understanding I told him my mind, and he never put himself to study it."

Fenwick would have liked to