hrough our telescopes, we could see the poor fellow
making frantic signals to the shore. There was no boat out there, and
a big bank intervening, there seemed no way to get to him. Watching
through our glasses, we saw him drive the long handle of his net deep
into the sand, and cling to it, while the tide rose speedily around
him. Meanwhile a whole bevy of his mates had rowed out to the bank,
and were literally carrying over its treacherous surface one of their
clumsy and heavy fishing punts. It was a veritable race for life; and
never have I watched one with keener excitement. We actually saw his
post give way, and wash downstream with him clinging to it, just
before his friends got near. Fortunately, drifting with the spar, he
again found bottom, and was eventually rescued, half full of salt
water. I remember how he fell in my estimation as a seaman--though I
was only a boy at the time.

There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the second. My next
brother Maurice died when he was only seven, and the fourth, Cecil,
being five years younger than I, left my brother Algernon and myself
as the only real companions for each other. Moreover, an untoward
accident, of which I was the unwitting cause, left my younger brother
unable to share our play for many years. Having no sisters, and
scarcely any boy friends, in the holidays, when all the boys in the
school went home, it might be supposed that my elder brother and I
were much thrown together. But as a matter of fact such was not the
case, for our temperaments being entirely different, and neither of us
having any idea of giving way to the other, we seldom or ever found
our pleasures together. And yet most of the worst scrapes into which
we fell were cooperative affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder
my share of the responsibility in the escapades, as well as in every
other line of life, my brother Algernon possessed any genius to which
the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was my
father over again, while I was a second edition of my mother. Father
was waiting to get into the sixth form at Rugby when he was only
thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had
been compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily
owing to brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel
off brilliant short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice.
I used always to remark that in whatever company he was