whose
look had not been off the spot since the moment we left the sloop's side.
"This is what I should call a human hermitage, and none of your out and
out solitudes Room for pigs and poultry; a nice gravelly beach for your
boat; good fishing in the offing, I'll answer for it; a snug
shoulder-of-mutton sort of a house; trees as big as a two-decker's lower
masts; and company within hail, should a fellow happen to take it into his
head that he was getting melancholy. This is just the spot I would like to
fetch-up in, when it became time to go into dock. What a place to smoke a
segar in is that bench up yonder, under the cherry tree; and grog must
have a double flavour alongside of that spring of fresh water!"

"You could become the owner of this very place, Moses, and then we should
be neighbours, and might visit each other by water. It cannot be much more
than fifty miles from this spot to Clawbonny."

"I dare say, now, that they would think of asking, for a place like this,
as much money as would buy a good wholesome ship--a regular A. No. 1."

"No such thing; a thousand or twelve hundred dollars would purchase the
house, and all the land we can see--some twelve or fifteen acres, at the
most. You have more than two thousand salted away, I know, Moses, between
prize-money, wages, adventures, and other matters."

"I could hold my head up under two thousand, of a sartainty. I wish the
place was a little nearer Clawbonny, say eight or ten miles off; and then
I do think I should talk to the people about a trade."

"It's quite unnecessary, after all. I have quite as snug a cove, near the
creek bluff at Clawbonny, and will build a house for you there, you shall
not tell from a ship's cabin; that would be more to your fancy."

"I've thought of that, too, Miles, and at one time fancied it would be a
prettyish sort of an idee; but it won't stand logarithms, at all. You may
build a room that shall have its cabin _look_, but you can't build one
that'll have a cabin _natur_' You may get carlins, and transoms, and
lockers and bulkheads all right; but where are you to get your motion?
What's a cabin without motion? It would soon be like the sea in the calm
latitudes, offensive to the senses. No! none of your bloody motionless
cabins for me. If I'm afloat, let me be afloat; if I'm ashore, let me be
ashore."

Ashore we were by this time, the boat's keel grinding gently on the
pebbles of the beach. We landed and walked towards the