Old "Salt" at the helm. "RATTLIN' FINE BREEZE, GEN'LEMEN!" screeching and bellowing and cat-calling. It smote the Black Leg with the stunning thud of a dozen steam-hammers, and sent her, broken up into fire-wood bundles, with every nail started, staggering topsy-turvy in the trough of the sea. Then all around came in grim earnest the fury of the tempest. Clouds, masts, sealskin-jackets, crew, cabin furniture, lighthouses, and driving cattle were pounded up as if by some irritable giant, and scattered, like well-prepared salad, hither and thither through the night in infinitesimal shreds, The whole heaven, too, emptied himself suddenly upon the starboard quarter in one sheet of black drenching ink. This finished the business for the underwriters. Instantly she sprung a leak-then fifty. Her hold was a well-stocked kitchen-garden.

A certain imperious personage stamped her foot.

EXPERIENCES.

strong glass of something hot and water stood near in on the leeward quarter, empty, when the cable tumbled overboard with a quiet chuckle, and the Black Leg swung round on to the top of a sunken bathing-machine.

"Helm hard a-starboard!" said somebody. But there was no attention paid to the order, and the bottom of the hired yacht came gently out. Then we knew that our little Summer outing at fifteen and sixpence a ton was over.

WHY?

"Why is the sky blue? And why are the sunrise and sunset crimson

I will just have the discreetion to tell ye a good one,'" observed and gold?"-Sir John Lubbock before the British Association at York. the Laird, who had been washed up the cuddy stairs, irons and all, and was now firmly fixed, upside down, in the main-brace.

But at this moment a most curious thing happened. The whole seething blackness of the heavens seemed to roll itself up suddenly into a corner like a piece of cheap-priced carpet. It was a most remarkable phenomenon. Yet all the time the glass was rising to the lips of our now observant King. It was a strange sight he saw. The whole vast plain of the Solent, stretching away as far as Portsmouth, lay helpless on its back, a lake of liquid rum. Here and there its surface was broken by the outline of smart yachts reeling on their belaying-pins, and in this wondrous calm, unable to get more than half-seas over. Then came a beautiful ochre mist out of the South, and the coves, that had been sleeping it off along the island shore, got up and staggered home, as Ryde, provided, in the mysterious tints of this peculiar sunset, with two piers, both lightheaded, began itself to revolve and mingle with the waving landscape beyond. Above, the scene was still more striking. In that swaying expanse were no pale magenta clouds, changing, as usual, first to sap-green and sepia, and fading, by delicate gradations, through the ten colours of a Society of Arts ninepenny box, into the purest of RECKITT's blues, but a couple of rainbows, bounding head over heels and turning double back somersaults whenever they could get a chance.

WHY? Subtle and sardonic sage,
You must be poking fun

At us of this grey-clouded age

Who seldom see the sun.
Why are skies blue? As wisely ask
Why winter is so green;
Why in our sweltering March we bask
In Sol's most sultry sheen?
Why English June's so jolly hot,
Its August days so dry?
Crimson and gold? 'Twere eye's delight,
If 'twere not all my eye.
What skyey influence rules all
Who read your learned Paper?
Month in month out, a dismal pall
Of lumpy leaden vapour!

Why are skies blue and sunsets gold?
Ironic queries jar so.
You surely need not to be told
They never are so!

Dr. BRADLEY, a good scholastic authority, says the best translation

In the far distance the prostrate horizon lay black and blinking. A he knows is his own from Oxford to Westminster.

AMARINTHA."

think he would, if he only sat long enough. [Happy Thought.-What chances an animal painter must have with a rabbit sitting!]

We both agree, however, that bottle-shooting is "excellent practice," and, as we go on, we tell each other stories arranged on a gradually ascending scale of thrilling interest, about what we have individually done in the way of rabbits, hares, grouse, and game generally. I never knew till this afternoon, when I am backing myself against the Dean, what a first-rate sportsman I have been up to now, and what a vast experience I suddenly seem to have got. Where does it come from? I've only been out really shooting twice in my life, and I can't have done it all then. Yet I am not conscious of absolutely telling untruths: I am perhaps embellishing, and am dividing the twice I went out (which being for two days was, say, altogether sixteen hours' shooting) by eight, so that I can give a varied experience. Wonder if the Dean is doing the same? I don't think so, because he has got a gun of his own and I haven't.

I notice there is one sort of shooting we both avoid mentioning, and that is the only one we 're likely to get on our yacht; i.e., wild fowl, and sea-birds. With this exception we draw the line at Deer; that is before we come to Deer. Neither of us risk any anecdotes about Deer.

ON BOARD THE STILL in harbour. Why? Because "the Captain says," &c., &c. As yet I have not seen the Captain. He is to me, up to this time, a sort of Madame BENOÎTON, as whenever I say insinuatingly to HAILSHER that I should like to have a talk to the Captain, HAILSHER replies that he hasn't seen him to-day, and the Steward, who is the intermediary between HAILSHER and everybody in the foc'sle (this, I believe, is the correct way of spelling and pronouncing Forecastle-where the Captain resides when at home, and where he is not to be disturbed by anybody Happy Thought.-Nautical Proverb: an English Skipper's house is his Fore-castle. N.B. Get up a new edition of Nautical Proverbs, and publish them at every Marine Library in the kingdom)-and the Steward, after going through the very evident farce of disappearing for a few seconds, and hiding himself behind a door, returns with the answer that the Captain has just gone on shore. I can't make out when he comes back. I never see him come back;"Rabbits sitting." Mine I know has been so, with my gun wellThe Dean's biggest success on land appears to have been with so I presume he must choose an opportune moment, either when we rested over a gate, and about five minutes to take steady aim, when are at dinner or at one of our meals-which are not few and far such was the destructive character of my shot, that, by the time the between-and, as it were, quietly "board" us, take his rationssmoke had cleared away, nothing was left of the unfortunate rabbit [Nautical phrase "rations a sailor is a ration-al being.", but two front teeth, some scattered remains, and a lot of fluffy fur. This will go to my Collection of Rough Material for Nautical Of this I make no mention to the Dean, but express (what I really Proverbs, to be subsequently worked up under the motto, "Let feel) my opinion, that "to shoot rabbits sitting is cruelty, or at all who will make the songs, but let me do their Nautical Pro- events unsportsmanlike." Whereupon the Dean says, apologetically, verbs." But the Composer can make the songs-will suggest it to that he has only done it once or twice as a pot-shot with a rifle, but him when he's in a good temper.]-and then quietly slip off again that as a rule he always shoots them running. I say "So do I"-but in the "Dingy,"-[Name of little boat-why "Dingy ?" Origin of I mean shoot at them running, which is all the difference-to them. nautical terms and phrases would make an Appendix, or as MILBURD About fifteen bottles fall to an expenditure of three hundred would say, an Up-on-decks to my Handy Volume of Nautical cartridges, and HAILSHER, who privately confides to me that his head Proverbs; only MILBURD would spoil the whole thing by calling aches with the perpetual popping, most pleasantly and with great them "Naughty-gal Proverbs,"I know him-anything senseless apparent consideration for the Dean's future amusement, advises as long as it's a jeu de mot]-while we are siesta-ing, and then him to "cease firing," as perhaps he won't be able to get any more back again and into his berth or bunk-[Why "Bunk?" Is it cartridges, and he may want them for sea-fowl. Dutch? 66 Mynheer van BUNK"-no, that was "Dunk"]-when we are carousing in the saloon, or when we've retired for the night. So that we are governed by an Invisible Captain. "A good subject this," I say to CULLINS, the Composer, "for you. Like the Flying Hollander. The 'Invisible Captain,' eh?"

"Don't see it," replies CULLINS, curtly. HAILSHER pleasantly adapts the well-known line from The Critic by way of softening down the Composer's asperity, and says, "The Invisible Captain he cannot see, because he is not yet in sight." Whereat the Dean roars heartily, and then looks about the breakfast-table to see what more he can devour, finally settling on everything the Composer had thoughtfully selected for his own consumption.

66

But we are tired of doing nothing, lying at anchor in Loch Ryan, while according to the Invisible Captain the stormy winds do blow outside. We begin to feel mutinous. The three guests, after darkly talking the matter over 'aft," determine to represent the case to HAILSHER, whom the sailors speak of as "the Governor." They call the Captain "the Skipper." [Why "Skipper ?" Sounds like a playful name for a flea.]

HAILSHER conceals his annoyance under an appearance of listlessness. Except the Dean,-who makes believe he is taking violent exercise by dressing in flannels, walking up and down the deck, then going below, putting on a shooting coat and deer-stalker hat to play at going out shooting, which he does with his rook-rifle at bottles tied to the stern,- -we are all becoming depressed, and pining for movement at all hazards. Now, for the first time, I can appreciate the full force of a passage at the opening of some chapter in our National History which (if my school memory serves me right) began

"The fleet had now been inactive for some months, and both officers and men began to express the very generally felt opinion that they ought to be doing something if they were to attack the enemy at all before the advent of the winter season rendered all operations at sea impossible, or at least, highly dangerous for the ships, and disastrous to the English prestige."

That's just our case: specially mine. I want to be off: somewhere, anywhere. "Anywhere, anywhere, out of the Loch!" To be up and doing something, anything! And so say all of us. We begin to murmur: we murmur to the Governor in the hope that he will bawl to the Captain, the Invisible Captain. "And when the Captain comes for to hear of it"-it is to be hoped he'll give the word to pipe all hands, hoist sails, and put out to sea.

Afternoon in Harbour.-Shooting bottles becomes monotonous. The Dean and myself congratulate one another on our excellent aim -and when we succeed in knocking one over, which we do on an average about once in twenty-five times, one of us says to the other with a knowing sportsmanlike air, "Ah, I don't think a rabbit, sitting, would have much chance with us now?" Privately, I don't

Dinner.-Joy! joy! the Captain has been seen at last. He has been interviewed by the Governor, and has made up his mind, come what come may, to sail to-morrow morning. We drink his health in a bumper of Pommery. HAILSHER offers a prize of an extra glass for a rhyme to Pommery. Here it is

One glass of Pommery
Makes little Toм merry.

The prize is mine, and once more I drink the Captain's health.
"I hope we shan't start till after breakfast," says the Composer,
who observes that "he hasn't yet got his sea-legs"-as if he were
expecting them to be sent home the first thing to-morrow, so that
he may try them on while dressing to see how they fit.

66

66

The Evening. We pass it hopefully, cheerfully, gleefully. The Composer, who till now has held aloof from the piano with a sort of don't-know-you" and "never-seen-you-before" sort of air, now seats himself, gives a few preliminary flourishes, and begins, as I observe, to warble. "Wobble, not warble, you mean," he says, for the first time pleasantly, "for the notes seem going up and down." The piano hasn't got its sea-legs on," says the Dean, who is just recovering from a short fit of despondency, consequent on his not having been able to find a rhyme to Pommery. We are all specially polite to the Composer. The reason of this oozes out later. Each one of us has a song he wants to sing (for his own personal and peculiar delectation) and each one of us will be disappointed should CULLINS refuse to accompany on the piano.

Happy Thought.-Sweeten the Composer. Keep him sweet. Shades of evening gather round us as the sounds of harmony ascend from our saloon on board the Amarintha. To-morrow we sail-with the gale, from the Loch of Ryan, oh!

I make the following notes:-Rough Material to be worked up into a new collection of Nautical Proverbs :

"An English Skipper's house is his Fore-castle."
"One Skipper doesn't make a

(what?-word wanted here.)
Shakspeare).
"Cry Hammock and unslip the cords" (From the Nautical

catches the Fish." N.B. Are worms used at sea for bait? If not, "The Early Fish catches the Worm," or "The Early Worm substitute whatever is used. A bit of tin is used as bait for Mackerel. So-"The early bit of tin catches, &c."; or-Happy Thought.-"All that glitters catches the Mackerel." This will be a valuable work.

MRS. RAMSBOTHAM says she is sorry she can't attend the Economical Methodist Conference, as she could give them several hints o Economy and Method.

'ARRY EXHIBITS HIS RECENT PURCHASE TO A HORSEY BUT CANDID FRIEND.
'Arry (with pride). "THERE, MY BOY!
Friend. "DEAR AT FORTY SHILLINGS!

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THAT? NOT DEAR AT FORTY GUINEAS, EH?"
WHY HE MUST HA' BEEN TRIED FOR SAUSAGES AND SENT BACK!"

MR. JOHN BRIGHT is inclined to throw the blame of any absurd reactionary feeling in favour of Protection, on the weather. The SHAKSPEARE ON "POTATO CULTURE."-"Tuber or not Tuber, that Sun, he says in effect, doesn't understand politics. Evidently the is the question "-after an excessive rainfall. Sun isn't Bright.