and everybody; which is all extremely satisfactory to
hear. There is so much to tell and so much to behold that, as G----
declares, "it is afternoon directly," and, the signal-flag being up,
we trip our anchor once more and rush at the bar, two quartermasters
and an officer at the wheel, the pilot and captain on the bridge, all
hands on deck and on the alert, for always, under the most favorable
circumstances, the next five minutes hold a peril in every second,
"Stand by for spray!" sings out somebody, and we do stand by, luckily
for ourselves, for "spray" means the top of two or three waves. The
dear little Florence is as plucky as she is pretty, and appears to
shut her eyes and lower her head and go _at_ the bar. Scrape, scrape,
scrape! "We've stuck! No, we haven't! Helm hard down! Over!" and so
we are. Among the breakers, it is true, buffeted hither and thither,
knocked first to one side and then to the other; but we keep right on,
and a few more turns of the screw take us into calm water under the
green hills of the bluff. The breakers are behind us, we have twenty
fathoms of water under our keel, the voyage is ended and over, the
captain takes off his straw hat to mop his curly head, everybody's
face loses the expression of anxiety and rigidity it has worn these
past ten minutes, and boats swarm like locusts round the ship. The
baby is passed over the ship's side for the last time, having been
well kissed and petted and praised by every one as he was handed from
one to the other, and we row swiftly away to the low sandy shore of
the "Point."

Only a few warehouses, or rather sheds of warehouses, are to be
seen, and a rude sort of railway-station, which appears to afford
indiscriminate shelter to boats as well as to engines. There are
leisurely trains which saunter into the town of D'Urban, a mile and a
half away, every half hour or so, but one of these "crawlers" had just
started. The sun was very hot, and we voyagers were all sadly
weary and headachy. But the best of the colonies is the prompt,
self-sacrificing kindness of old-comers to new-comers. A gentleman had
driven down in his own nice, comfortable pony-carriage, and without a
moment's hesitation he insisted on our all getting into it and making
the best of our way to our hotel. It is too good an offer to be
refused, for the sun is hot and the babies are tired to death; so we
start, slowly enough, to plough our way through heavy sand up to the
axles. If th