e same
thing, and we heaved like anything.

It was a proud moment when her nose touched the water, and prouder still
when only a small part of her stern remained on the beach and Mr.
Benenden remarked--

"All aboard!"

The red boy gave a "leg up" to Dicky and me and clambered up himself.
Then the two men gave the last shoves to the boat, already cradled
almost entirely on the bosom of the deep, and as the very end of the
keel grated off the pebbles into the water, they leaped for the gunwale
and hung on it with their high sea-boots waving in the evening air.

By the time they had brought their legs on board and coiled a rope or
two, we chanced to look back, and already the beach seemed quite a long
way off.

We were really afloat. Our smuggling expedition was no longer a dream,
but a real realness. Oswald felt almost too excited at first to be able
to enjoy himself. I hope you will understand this and not think the
author is trying to express, by roundabout means, that the sea did not
agree with Oswald. This is not the case. He was perfectly well the whole
time. It was Dicky who was not. But he said it was the smell of the
cabin, and not the sea, and I am sure he thought what he said was true.

In fact, that cabin was a bit stiff altogether, and was almost the means
of upsetting even Oswald.

It was about six feet square, with bunks and an oil stove, and heaps of
old coats and tarpaulins and sou'-westers and things, and it smelt of
tar, and fish, and paraffin-smoke, and machinery oil, and of rooms where
no one ever opens the window.

Oswald just put his nose in, and that was all. He had to go down later,
when some fish was cooked and eaten, but by that time he had got what
they call your sea-legs; but Oswald felt more as if he had got a
sea-waistcoat, rather as if he had got rid of a land-waistcoat that was
too heavy and too tight.

I will not weary the reader by telling about how the nets are paid out
and dragged in, or about the tumbling, shining heaps of fish that come
up all alive over the side of the boat, and it tips up with their weight
till you think it is going over. It was a very good catch that night,
and Oswald is glad he saw it, for it was very glorious. Dicky was asleep
in the cabin at the time and missed it. It was deemed best not to rouse
him to fresh sufferings.

It was getting latish, and Oswald, though thrilled in every marrow, was
getting rather sleepy, when old Benenden said, "There she