wish though a
moderate wind, we passed a number of fishermen, and what struck my
mind with the strangeness almost of the Flying Dutchman, a three-masted
barque under full sail, at a distance. It was sunset at the time. She
caught the light and bowed upon her journey, a sweet sight, too quickly
lost in the dark. Soon we picked up the flash of a lightship off the Dutch
shore, and soon after that the cold to which my wanderings had not made
me careless sent me inside.

Chilly brightness and blue sky saw us making rapidly over the North
Sea, visited by thrushes and linnets, while the water seemed crowded
with those clever birds, though so gawky upon the wing, the divers.
We crossed the wake of an oil-tank, burning the water almost like the
witch's oils in "The Ancient Mariner," and scenting the air unlike those
abstractions; came to a lightship, where our course was altered; and met
the pilot cutter in a calm sea and air vivid with sun and cold about four.
The rope ladder went down, the row-boat came alongside, and the pilot
was taken up to the bridge. I could not repress odd emotions at thus
seeing again "Brother Boche"--he looked a replica of ancient types of
my acquaintance--after such a long separation.

The estuary of the Ems received us, a flat sheet of water, with low
coastlands only noticed by reason of towers here and there. The tides
obliged us to anchor some miles outside Emden at six, and to wait until
midnight. The sky darkened and loured into rain. At twelve in a black
and gusty night, to the accompaniment of much hooting and shouting, the
_Bonadventure_ moved up the river, and in the greyness and chill of
daybreak berthed in a quiet basin at Emden.

Through this last movement I had tried to snatch some sleep, but was
harassed by the socialism of Bicker and Mead, who considered it but fair
that as they were being deprived of their sleep, I should be deprived
of mine. They, therefore, visited me at intervals, switched on my fan
which was now quite unnecessary, prodded me with toasting-forks, and
so saluted the happy morn, like those larks which were now singing and
soaring to justify any praise of them that ever was written.

-----

[Footnote 1: "Harriet Lane." The name of that unfortunate lady is often
applied to the curious tinned meat provided aboard.]

[Footnote 2: "This sauce." A pink luxury poured over Sunday's duff.]

[Footnote 3: "Cheese." In these closing lines the poet's hope was to
record the