ecks of driven foam, that it forced to follow landward
too, for all they tried to stop and rest. The population was mostly
employed getting the boats up as close to the houses as practice
permitted, and the capstans were all a-creak with the strain; and one
shrieked for a dab of lard, and got it, just as they passed. The man
with Bessie and the anchor on his arms--for it was his--paused in his
rotations with one elbow on his lever, and one foot still behind
the taut cable he was crossing. His free hand saluted; and then, his
position being defined, he was placed on a moral equality with his
superiors, and could converse. The old-fashioned hat-touch, now dying
out, is just as much a protest against the way social order parts man
from man as it is an acknowledgment of its necessity.

The lover of Bessie and Elinor and Kate was disposed to ignore the
efforts of the wind. There might, he said, be a bit of sea on, come
two or three in the marn'n--at the full of the tide. The wind might
get up a bit, if it went round suth'ard. The wind was nothing in
itself--it was the direction it came from; it got a bad character
from imputed or vicarious vice. It would be a bit rough to get a
boat off--the lady might get a wetting.... At which point Rosalind
interrupted. Nothing was further from her thoughts, she said, than
navigation in any form. But had the speaker seen her daughter go
by--the young lady that swam? For Sally was famous. He hadn't,
himself, but maybe young Benjamin had. Who, taking leave to speak from
this, announced frankly that he _had_ seen a young lady, in company
with her sweetheart, go by nigh an hour agone. The tattooed one
diluted her sweetheart down to "her gentleman" reluctantly. In his
land, and the one there would soon be for the freckled and blue-eyed
Benjamin, there was no such artificial nonsense. Perhaps some sense
of this showed itself in the way he resumed his work. "Now, young
Benjamin--a-action!" said he; and the two threw themselves again
against the pole of the mollified capstan.

If Rosalind fancied this little incident had put his previous
experience out of her husband's mind she was mistaken. He said, as
they passed on in the direction of the jetty, "I think I should like
to wind up capstans. It would suit me down to the ground." But then
became thoughtful; and, just as they were arriving at the jetty,
showed that his mind had run back by asking suddenly, "What was the
fat Baron's name?"

"Die