SHORT STORIES.

The first instalment of a budget of breezy little narratives—exciting, humorous, and curious—hailing from all parts of the world. This month's collection comprises a weird experience at an Hungarian inn, a snake adventure in West Africa, and a sea-captain's account of a rough and-tumble voyage.

By F. Harris Deans.

Othertravellers may have experienced adventures in inns. They may have been awakened—many declare they have—in the early hours of the morning by the creaking of the stairs; have listened, frozen with horror, to the whispered colloquy between the villainous innkeeper and his equally villainous wife outside his door; have heard the stealthy sharpening of a knife. I admit that such adventures may have befallen other wayfarers, but that anyone has lived through a night at an inn as strange as that spent by me I am unable to believe.

MR. F. HARRIS DEANS, WHO HERE RELATES AN AMUSING EXPERIENCE THAT BEFELL HIM IN HUNGARY.From a Photograph.

MR. F. HARRIS DEANS, WHO HERE RELATES AN AMUSING EXPERIENCE THAT BEFELL HIM IN HUNGARY.

From a Photograph.

The only person—at one time I had regarded him as a friend—to whom I have hitherto nerved myself to recount my experience regarded it as an excuse—nay, more than an excuse, an incentive—for mirth. The thoughtful reader, however, who now becomes acquainted with my story will, I feel confident, place himself in imagination in my position, so that his perusal of this article will, at all events, enable him to refrain from ribald laughter.

I will confess at the outset that my knowledge of Hungarian is limited to some dozen words. The time of day I will pass with you in the most fluent Ungarisch; if you, enraptured at my accent, wish to continue the conversation, and will confine yourself to remarking that the weather is hot or cold (you must not say warm or chilly), I will agree, or disagree, with you—curtly, maybe, but nevertheless I will do so; if you are thirsty I will order you wine, beer, or water; your hunger I will satisfy with bread. Further, I can amuse, instruct, and elevate you by counting up to ten.

The reader who himself possesses some knowledge of Hungarian will share with me my admiration of my linguistic accomplishments. It takes some years of patient efforts for an Hungarian himself to learn his own language. I feel confident, had I been so fortunate (I am writing this in the heart of Hungary, and the inhabitants are an impulsive people) as to have been born an Hungarian, I should have borne dumbness with equanimity.

All this—though, to the broad-minded, it excuses my ignorance of the language—does not alter the fact that I was fully aware beforehand that in certain regions of the country I should not be able to enjoy heart-to-heart talks with the people. Even in England there are whole villages which speak no tongue save their native one. I did not, however, anticipate that my ignorance would land me in the weird adventure here set forth.

In a town, however, such as Arad I did not anticipate that there would exist one miserable, imbecile, uneducated incompetent—who, alas, only knows my opinion of him through a far too polite interpreter—who spoke only his own language, and that this one disreputable outcast and disgrace to an educated nation should cross my path.

I arrived in Arad—a town of about sixty thousand people, lying near the Roumanian border—at about 2 a.m. I had not slept for over thirty-six hours, and I was so tired that I would have shared a bed with a Roumanian peasant. Can I say more?

At the nearest hotel I pulled myself together and demanded, in what was, under the circumstances, very tolerable German, a bedroom. There was no difficulty about this; there was a room vacant. Gladly I filled in particulars of myself on the Police Form as the law demands.

"Are you an Austrian or a German?" inquired the porter.

I glanced at him sharply; I was in no mood for sarcasm. Besides, if it came to that,hisGerman wasn't of much account. But no; his face was gravity itself; courteous curiosity was its only expression. I pointed—I had no mind to risk my reputation as a linguist by further speech—to the form I had just filled in.

"London," he read. "So, ein Englander?"

"Ja," said I.

I got into bed at 2.30 a.m., and immediately fell last asleep.

"ONCE MORE THE IDIOT MET ME WITH AN AMIABLE GRIN."

Some time later I awoke and sat up with a start. Thump, thump, thump—blows rained steadily, monotonously, on my door. I switched on the light; it was 3.30 a.m. Springing out of bed, I threw open my door. The interrupter of my repose, apparently resting against it after his exertions, fell forward into the room and trod on my bare toes. I called him, in German, a clumsy donkey, and demanded to know what all of the noise was about. By way of reply he grinned at me amiably—as if we had a little joke in common—and promptly retreated.

Puzzled by his behaviour, I looked along the corridor. Everything appeared to be all right, so I retired again to bed.

Seven minutes, by my watch, had I been sleeping dreamlessly, when again that tattoo was beaten on my door. I nearly choked with anger, and, throwing off my quilt, I dashed madly to the door.

Once more the idiot met me with an amiable grin.

"You confounded fool!" I roared, shaking my fist in his beaming face; "what do you think you're doing? Even if this is an Hungarian game, do you think this is the time to start teaching it to a stranger? Your intentions may be good; I admit I am lonely; perhaps in the afternoon I may be glad to play some simple little game with you. But not now. Do you understand? Not at three in the morning. Get!"

My vivacity appeared to cause him much satisfaction, and he again took his departure.

I returned to bed.

This time I didn't even succeed in getting to sleep; he must have been waiting round the corner. Once more he beat upon my door.

I made no attempt to speak to him; I could not have expressed my feelings even in English; I seized him by the shoulders (luckily he was a good-tempered man) and shook him. Apparently, judging from the sound, I had shaken him to pieces. I looked on the ground and saw that he had dropped—my boots! This restored my speech. "Boots!" I shrieked, as he picked them up and politely offered them to me. "I want peace, not boots. Have I as much as mentioned boots to you? Does any sane man want his boots at three o'clock? Do you think I sleep in them? Do you imagine that's what's keeping me awake, not having them?"

I think it was the man's perfect placidity that made me so mad. Had he losthistemper, had he only sworn in Hungarian—a language admirably suited for the art, by the way—I should have felt better. But no; he maintained a perfect silence; he appeared to regard me as a lunatic on whom speech would be wasted. Realizing at last, however, that I was not yearning at that moment for my boots, he put them on one side—to be introduced again at a more suitable moment. Next he pointed to my pyjamas.

"What about them?" I demanded, furiously. "What's wrong with them? Is it the colour, orwhat?" As a matter of fact they looked rather neat—a sort of chocolate with blue stripes. In any case, I didn't want to be awakened in the middle of the night to have a boots tell me he didn't admire my pyjamas. They weren't meant to be admired; they were intended to be slept in. I wished he would realize that.

"Perhaps you would rather I wore a night-shirt," I continued, as he remained speechless. "Well, I'm not going to. I'm an Englishman, Englander, Angol—do you understand?—and I'll wear what I like. Now I'm going to bed again. If I so much as hear you breathe near my door before nine o'clock I'll shoot you." With that I retired and slammed the door.

I was half-way towards the bed when the door opened and boots inserted his head. Then a hand followed, and he scratched his head in a puzzled manner. Words, I felt, were wasted on him. In as dignified a manner as possible I climbed into bed and switched off the light hanging over it. Immediately boots turned on the light near the door. I sat up, indignant.

"Look here," I said, "I've had enough of it." I raised a cautioning forefinger. "I willnotplay games with you. Understand that, once for all. Go and wake somebody else up—somebody who knows these national customs of yours. I'm speaking seriously now. When I engaged this room I engaged it to sleep in. Sleep! Do you understand? It's an English custom. You're wasting your time trying to talk to me. I don't understand your language, and I'm not going to learn—not immediately, anyhow. Now, go! Go, you——!" As I rushed at him he turned and fled, and, locking the door, for the fifth time that night I got into bed.

I was by this time in such a mood that I was awakened with a start at four o'clock by the sound of whispering outside my door. Without stopping to consider how I should dispose of the corpse of my intended victim, I again vacated my bed. This time boots was accompanied by another person, who turned out to be the manager.

"I hev' come to apologize," he remarked, blandly.

I struggled to regain my composure.

"This is too good of you," I said, warmly. "Come in and take a seat."

He misunderstood my sarcasm and promptly entered, accompanied by the boots.

"Zere have been a leetle mistake," he continued, with an amused smile I made no effort to share.

"It's more than kind of you," I said, gratefully, "to come and wake me up at four in the morning to explain it."

He bowed modestly. Personal convenience, he assured me earnestly, was as nothing to an act of courtesy.

Then he explained. It appeared that the previous occupier of my room had been a German, who had intended to take his departure at three o'clock that morning. At the last moment, however, he had changed his mind, and had left at 11 p.m. Unfortunately, the porter, whom he had desired to instruct the boots to awaken him, had forgotten to cancel the order.

"Und he had sayed he vos a ver' heafy sleeper!" he wound up. "So you see, it vos a mutual misunderstanding. Nicht was?"

"This," I said, "makes everything satisfactory. Now, if you don't mind, I should like to go to sleep. I have to catch a train at ten. Perhaps you will see that I am not awakened before nine?"

When he had impressed this on the penitent boots, we parted, with mutual expressions of regard.

The boots—no doubt in a well-meant desire to make up for his earlier mistake—this time forbore to awaken me at all. I accordingly awoke at midday, in plenty of time for my next train, which left twenty-two hours later.

By E. F. Martin, late of the Royal Niger Company's Service.

I havesince been to a great extent cured; but in my earlier African days, somewhere about eleven years ago, I was full of romantic ideas and intoxicated with the strange glamour and mystery that pervaded everything connected with the great Niger River and its unknown territories. Having tied up to a bank late one afternoon, half an hour before sunset, I took my gun—a sporting Martini—and set out from the little river launch, of which I was the sole white passenger, and made my way through the long grass skirting the banks of the stream, until I emerged into an open, ploughed field, with its lines of mounds about eighteen inches high, indicating guinea-corn or yam cultivation. My intention was to reach a backwater, some half a mile away, which I had noticed as we steamed up the river a short time before tying up. I hoped I might find hippo, or, at any rate, an alligator or two, hidden in the seclusion of this secret byway of the great river.

Crossing the field I entered a kind of copse,consisting of minor trees and scrub. Pushing my way through I found some clearer ground, carpeted with the gourd plant. Ahead of me I noticed that the land suddenly dipped to a large pool that might have been connected with the main river. This, I thought, would do as well as my backwater, especially as I heard just then the distant grunting roar of a hippo. Next moment, without warning, the solid ground gave way under my feet, and I went hurtling down into black darkness, bringing up with a tremendous shock that seemed to jar me from tip to toe.

MR. E. F. MARTIN, WHO HAD AN APPALLING STRUGGLE WITH A SNAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF A PIT.From a Photograph.

MR. E. F. MARTIN, WHO HAD AN APPALLING STRUGGLE WITH A SNAKE AT THE BOTTOM OF A PIT.

From a Photograph.

When I had recovered from my utter astonishment, and had made certain that no bones were broken, I looked about and above me to see where I was and what had happened. Around and beneath me I could see nothing; everything was shrouded in impenetrable blackness. Above me, however, I saw the evening sky, gradually fading into night. My gun was gone. Where was I? What had happened? Had the earth opened and swallowed me up?

I decided to strike a light and see what kind of place I had fallen into. The blue spurt and the flickering flame, settling almost immediately into a thin, steady tongue of yellow fire, revealed to me the fact that I had fallen into some kind of trap—probably for hippo—and that this trap was some eight feet long by five broad and ten deep. At the bottom, at regular intervals, were placed pointed stakes about eighteen inches apart. Had I fallen prone I should have been impaled. I had apparently, then, something to be thankful for. As this thought struck me my match burnt the tips of my fingers and I dropped it. As it fell something caught my eye that froze my blood in my veins—some coiled black thing was slowly moving in the farther corner! Part of its body was enshrouded in the shadow of the stakes, but I saw sufficient to convince me that my companion was some kind of venomous snake. Have any of my readers known what it is to feel the heart stop dead still, after one fierce bound into the throat, the body go cold and clammy, like dank, damp clay—like the earth that I leaned up against in that moment of dumb, stricken terror? You that have know what I felt then, ten feet down in the bowels of the earth, imprisoned with that coiling thing. You that have not, pray that you never may, for it seems as though the life is passing from one in the cold sweat which oozes through every pore. I leant against the side of the pit trembling like an aspen leaf. Oh! for my gun and a steady light! At least I could then stake all in one try for life. My hands shaking violently, I lit another match and glanced in the direction of the horror. I might have spared my pains. The brute—a long, black, shiny snake, with a sort of hooded head—was actually at my feet, the sinuous body stretched across the rough floor among the pointed stakes!

I stood still as though paralyzed, the match burning like a tiny flare in my uplifted right hand. The snake came straight on without striking, and as the match went out it started to coil up my left leg. The sensation of that strange, gliding grip, which squeezed the muscles as it passed along, is impossible to describe. Up it came in the darkness, higher and higher still, feeling like a hawser of steel round my body—and heavy! Suddenly—to my dying day I shall never forget the horror of that moment—its cold, hard snout touched my chin. It was just a sort of gliding touch, with no attempt at striking. Obeying a mad impulse, I gripped straight for where the neck should be, judging by the feel of the snout on my chin, and with the strength of a maniac my fingers closed on the snake just behind the head. Feeling my advantage, I forced my two thumbs deep into its throat. Then I tripped forward in my excitement, the coils of the snake suddenly contracting with a fierce pressure as I strengthened my grip. Down I went, tearing myself badly on two stakes as I fell, gashing my right leg above the knee—the scar remains to this day—and receiving a nasty bruise on my left shoulder. In spite of my fall, however, I had enough presence of mind to keep the terrible head at arm's length, and now, once on the ground, in spite of cuts, bruises, and the twining coils round my arm, I got on to my knees and banged and dashed that deadly head on the hard earth and against the stakes I could feel on either side. How long I kept on in my wild, frenzied fury I don't know, but gradually the fierce-gripping coils relaxed, until at last the limp form hung from my bleeding hands, lifeless and harmless.

I don't remember what happened then, but I think I lost consciousness for a time. All I know for certain is that I was hauled out of thathole some time later—about 8 p.m., to be exact—by two of the coloured deck-hands, who had tracked me through the field and the bushes, and, ultimately, to the edge of the hippo trap. They guessed that I had fallen in, and the lowering of a lamp that they carried proved this to be the case. My gun lay where it had fallen, close to the edge.

"I TRIPPED FORWARD IN MY EXCITEMENT."

Why that snake never struck me I do not know to this day, unless it was that, seeing me in the sudden light of the match leaning up against the opposite wall, it had attempted toget out of the pit—into which it also must have dropped by accident like myself—by using my body as a ladder. For all I know the skeleton of the creature still lies in that ten-foot-deep hole. I have not since been there to inquire, nor do I intend to do so in the future; the very thought of the place is nightmare enough.

This incident occurred about four miles below Abutshi, the trading station near Onitsha, before one comes to the shallows that make that part of the Niger so difficult in the dry season.

By Commander R. Dowling, R.N.R. (Captain in the Imperial Ottoman Navy).

InDecember, 1900, I left Port Said for London in command of a small "hopper." For the benefit of the uninitiated, I should explain that this is a vessel with a bottom which opens out and allows the contents of the hold to fall into the sea. The "hopper" had formerly been employed in widening the Suez Canal, but had since been converted into a tank steamer for carrying oil. I had undertaken to bring her to England in tow of another steamer of some seven thousand tons burden.

COMMANDER R. DOWLING, R.N.R., WHO DESCRIBES A PERILOUS VOYAGE HE MADE FROM PORT SAID TO LONDON IN A "HOPPER."From a Photo. by Apollon Studio.

COMMANDER R. DOWLING, R.N.R., WHO DESCRIBES A PERILOUS VOYAGE HE MADE FROM PORT SAID TO LONDON IN A "HOPPER."

From a Photo. by Apollon Studio.

I got the crew together with some difficulty. When I explained the project to English-speaking seamen, they all refused, in a most emphatic manner, to have anything to do with it, and in the end I had to fall back on a number of men to whom I was unable to explain it at all properly. They were one Swede, the mate; a Greek and a Frenchman, whom I understood to be engineers; four Italian seamen and four Greek firemen, and an Italian cook. Excepting the Swede, who understood English with difficulty, not one of the crew could make out a word I said, so that during the first part of the voyage I was compelled to give orders to the ship's company in a kind of pantomimic dumb-show.

We managed to bend on two five-inch hawsers to the other steamer and started on our voyage, using our own engines to assist the towing ship. The engineer was full of zeal, which he showed by repeatedly "ramming" our consort, through his failure to understand the orders sent below through the tube—we had no telegraph—and this, needless to say, caused a great deal of unpleasantness, shown chiefly in personal abuse of myself from the big vessel, though I repeatedly tried to gesticulate explanations as to the position.

The Italian cook turned out an utter fraud, giving repeated proofs of his incapacity. I endeavoured to instruct him by practical demonstration in the art of boiling pork and cabbage, but it came on to blow and, the sea rising rapidly as it does in the Mediterranean, the galley was washed out and the cooking difficulty disposed of for ever, for we had to live on cocoa, biscuit, and onions during nearly the whole of that eventful voyage.

The seas grew bigger and bigger, and theCrocodilerolled horribly. Finally we had to abandon the quarters forward for fear of being washed overboard. I had twice tried to get to my cabin, for I had stowed away all the medical comforts, my sextant, cigars, and so forth in my bunk. At the first attempt I got knocked down and nearly had my leg broken by a heavy sea; at the second I came as close to being washed overboard as possible. By a desperate effort, however, I finally got down to my cabin, where I found everything—my clothesincluded—washing about in a depth of bilge water and oil, while my precious sextant was smashed. I managed to rescue the barometer—an excellent one, lent me by the towing ship, but useless under the circumstances—but I was obliged to let everything else go.

"THE SEAS GREW BIGGER AND BIGGER, AND THE 'CROCODILE' ROLLED HORRIBLY."

When I clambered back on deck I found the crew simply torpid with fright. Our two little engines raced as we lifted in such a way as to threaten a smash-up of the whole of the machinery. In spite of all my threats, and even some muscular persuasion, I was unable toinduce a single man of the crew, with the exception of the mate, to stir. The ship, I may remark, was an awkward one to handle; she had no bulwarks, except a small piece forward and aft, with a single chain in between. Bunker lids were being continually washed off, but, as the men were too scared to reship them, the mate and myself had to do this ourselves to prevent our going down.

In the middle of the night, the weather growing steadily worse, one of the anchors got adrift. By a mingling of menace and persuasion I got one of the Italians to go forward with me to secure it. The mate, dead beat, was lying asleep on the engine-room gratings. We watched our time and made a rush for it, when a tremendous sea came over, simply burying us in water. I smashed my left toe against a pump, got a big piece taken out of one forefinger, and felt blood running into my eyes from a wound in my head. Looking round, I saw the Italian overboard, hanging on convulsively to a rail, and made a rush to his rescue. I managed to get hold of him, and finally hauled him on deck—and an awful bundle he was, having seemingly put all the clothes he had in the world on his back. However, we contrived to pass a lashing round the anchor and secure it as well as could be done under the circumstances. We were also successful in getting back aft, though the luckless Italian was bowled over and rolled about beneath another heavy sea, but the clothes he had on seemed to protect him, and he got to the stokehold uninjured.

Throughout the grim days and black nights that followed we laboured incessantly, led by the two hawsers that held us to the other ship. These hawsers had to be watched incessantly, and pieces of wood kept under the places where they came on board to prevent them from being cut. There was not a chair, or a stool, or a dry rag on board the ship. The crew spent their time praying or lamenting, and when we wanted to sleep the only place on which we could lie was the engine-room gratings, from which we got up as black as sweeps with coal-dust and grime. The seas were constantly washing over us from stem to stern, though the ship ahead had been dropping oil for three days to make things better for us. She herself was in difficulties, as we could see from the seas which continually rushed out from her water ports and scuppers.

About daybreak on the fourth day a loud report sounded through the din of wind and weather, and I saw our port hawser snap close up to the towing ship. We were then, of course, towing the broken part astern, and for hours I was in dread that it would foul our propeller. Luckily the weather moderated somewhat, and the larger vessel eased up, endeavouring to drop a line down to our end of the hawser so that we might heave it aboard. Owing to the drift to leeward, however, we found it impossible to do anything in this way, so, after waiting some hours longer, the towing vessel launched a boat to bring in the end. The boat was stove in as soon as it touched the water, and it was hauled on board again only just in time to save the crew from drowning. In the meantime I started to get out one of our own small steel boats. For four hours we laboured at this task, for the steamer rolled so much that at one moment the boat would be hanging over the water quite a distance from the side, and at another threatening to knock the funnel off. In the end we managed to launch her, pick up the end of the broken hawser, connect up again, and make a fresh start. But I defy anyone who has not gone through it to realize the labour, the difficulties, and danger we went through. Tossed about by mountainous seas, expecting every moment to be capsized, to fish up a five-inch steel hawser trailing deep below the surface, and pull back with it to the towing vessel, is a labour the arduousness of which my pen is utterly unable to describe. At last we got started again, and two days later, one lovely clear morning, we arrived at Algiers, the first port of call on our voyage.

Here the captain of the towing ship went ashore with me to obtain two Manila hawsers, these having more "give" and "spring" in them than wire ropes. We ransacked Algiers in vain, and accordingly cabled home for instructions. These were to the effect that the "hopper" was to be brought to England under her own steam, and I was given twenty-four hours to decide whether I would undertake the task. I made up my mind, now I had got so far, to see the thing through.

Most of the crew had cleared off at Algiers the moment they had the chance, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I managed to get another lot together. Having seen my friend the towing ship off, I started myself two days later for Gibraltar.

Scarcely had we got to sea again when we began to encounter the same diabolical weather as before. I made a discovery, too, that disconcerted me more almost than anything that we had already experienced—I found we had no instruments! During the voyage from Port Said all the navigation, of course, was done by the towing vessel, and the necessity of independent navigation, in consequence of the altered arrangements, had never entered our heads. I had neither a chronometer nor sextant; only a small-scale chart and a very questionable and erratic compass on the bridge. After muchcogitation I found the only thing I could do was to get the bearing of the North Star, and this I did by laying a broomstick along the top of the compass and pointing it as straight as possible. By this I was able to shape a course to Cape de Gat, the south-east corner of Spain, making due allowance for wind and current.

But trouble soon began. At Algiers I had picked up a French engineer who was in perpetual trouble with his engines. He spoke no English, I spoke no French; so that after various altercations in our own languages I was obliged to intimate to him, in a fashion it was difficult for him to misunderstand, that further discussions were useless. One morning, however, when between blowing and pitching it was hard to stand upright, the engineer came tumbling on deck frantic with excitement, gesticulating madly and shouting, "Monsieur le Commandant, oily, oily!" while he pointed a quivering forefinger below.

I rushed down and found the starboard engine bearings grinding away just about red-hot for want of oil, the stench and steam being indescribable. I cursed him for an idiot, for he might have known we were half full of oil, and he promptly shut off steam. During this time our tiny vessel (she was only a hundred and thirty-five tons), having but little way on her, was tossed about like a chip, and the rest of the crew lay in a jumble in the stokehold—sick, praying and groaning—neither persuasion nor kicks having the least effect on them. It was under these cheerful conditions that, having restarted the engines, we reached Gibraltar a day or two later.

The Officer of Health at Gibraltar received my account of the voyage, first with incredulity, and then astonishment. He heard my proposal to navigate home under the prevailing conditions with a stare of stupefaction, and then remarked, significantly, "Well, rather you than me, captain."

I had literally to hold the chief engineer down at starting in order to frustrate his frantic struggles to get overboard. We made for Cape St. Vincent, the weather being bad, though endurable, thence I steered for Cape Roca and the Burlings, but made neither. Finally we picked up Cape Finisterre and were in the Bay of Biscay, where, sure enough, we caught it. It blew hard from the north-west, and the vessel at times nearly stood on end. Nevertheless, we had to be continually shifting coal and water to keep the propeller under water. In the middle of the night the second engineer crawled along to me on the bridge to tell me the piston packings of the port engine had blown out, and those of the other engine were leaking so badly that they were expected to blow out also at any moment.

Now, if the engine had gone, there was not a spar or a sail of any kind on the vessel to keep her before the wind, and our fate, had we once been cast into the trough of the sea, would have been certain. Accordingly we had to keep one engine running at half speed while we patched up the other with some valuable hose which had been used for pumping oil out. When we had finished one we turned to the other, and managed to make a tolerable job of both. This kept us going for nearly two days.

On the fourth day from Finisterre, about one in the morning, we sighted a light. At first I thought it was the coast of France, but after a while I saw the familiar stump of the Eddystone, and then I knew where I was. On receiving the joyful news the crew worked up some sort of enthusiasm, and I determined to put out to sea again and face it. The firemen threw their hearts into their work and we breasted the waves gallantly. Soon, however, I heard a muffled report and yells from the engine-room, and, rushing below, found we had to stop the port engine for a time; so we went on with the starboard one pretty comfortably for about twenty-four hours, when the repairs were roughly completed. Then the wind rose again to almost hurricane force, and the ship rolled and pitched quite in her best style. Even this was not the worst, for near Dungeness a heavy sea threw a water-tank on top of me, and when I was hauled out I found I had broken a bone in my left wrist, in addition to other injuries. At that point, too, the electric light went out. The ship was now in total darkness; we had no mast or side-lights, and presently, to crown all, a dense fog settled upon us. At that moment a nautical Mark Tapley would have been hard put to it to muster up any cheerfulness worth mentioning.

However, to make an end to a long story, we worried through our troubles somehow or other, got a pilot on board, and at last arrived off the Royal Albert Docks, where very thankfully we made fast to the Galleon buoys on December 22nd. To show one difficulty I had to contend with during this ever-memorable voyage I may mention that the compass was so untrue that to make a true east course I had to steer south a quarter west.

For ten days after our arrival I was laid up and unable to get off to the ship. When I did I found that nearly the whole of my things had been stolen. I received from the owners, in recognition of the danger and arduousness of the voyage, a gratuity of ten pounds!

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