eacombe by the back (people was jest astir,
Sunday morning) going each our way from the churchyard, an' I listened
outside mother's door. Father was home again, an' they was to
breakfast. Her'd had my letter telling them as I'd a-shipped for
Bombay.

"'They'll Bumbay the beggar!' father was saying, only 'twasn't 'beggar'
as he did say.

"Then my sister Mary, cried out: 'Here's Tony!'

"'I know'd _he'd_ never go to Bumbay!' outs father so quick as ever.

"But they was so pleased as Punch to see Tony back, cas I ude see, if
they'd ha' cared to say so. I don' know 'xactly why I went off to
sea--summut inside driving of me--'twasn't only 'cause there wern't
nothing doin'--but I an't never been no more. An' thic Mam Widger
there'd hae summut to say about it now. Eh, Annie?"

4

[Sidenote: _THE SEA'S STAMP_]

It is an Englishman's privilege to grumble, and a sailorman's duty; yet
one thing always strikes me in talking to seafaring men, namely how
indelible the sea's stamp is; how indissolubly they are bound to the
sea--with sunken bonds like those which unite an old married
couple,--and also what outbursts of savage hatred they have against it.
Tony says that if he could earn fifteen shillings a week regularly on
land, he would give up the sea altogether. I very much doubt it. The
sea has him fast. He says further that nobody would go to sea unless he
were caught young and foolish, and that few would stay there if they
could get away. There are, among the older fishermen of Seacombe, some
who have worked well, and could still work, but prefer to stay ashore
and starve. Tony holds them excused. "Aye!" he says, "they've a-worked
hard in their day, an' they knows they ain't no for'arder. An' now
they'm weary o' it all, an' don't care; an' that's how I'll be some
day, if I lives--weary o'it, an' just where I was!"

But the sea has her followers, and will continue to have them, because
seafaring is the occupation in which health, strength and courage have
their greatest value; in which being a man most nearly suffices a man.
It is remarkable that Baudelaire, decadent Frenchman, apostle of the
artificial, who was violently home-sick when he went on a voyage,
should have expressed the relation of man and the sea--their enmity and
love--more subtly than any English poet.

Homme libre, toujours tu cheriras la mer;
La mer et ton miroir; tu contemples ton ame
Dans le deroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton e