64 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



a phenomenally high tide occurred. His wife a comely 

 girl of British descent was alone on the shoal. She 

 watched the rising water apprehensively, until all the sand 

 was covered save the few feet on which the frail shelter 

 stood. One more ripple and the floor was swamped. 

 Then, wading and swimming, she managed to reach a punt, 

 and so saved her life. Since then these patches of sand 

 have not been regarded as a safe outpost even by those 

 most venturesome of people beche-de-mer fishers. 



This is not an apology, but a confession ; not a plea of 

 defence, but a justification a fair and free chronicle, a 

 frank acknowledgment of the tributes of impartial Neptune 

 Neptune who gives and who takes away who stealthily 

 filches with tireless fingers, and who, when in the mood, 

 robs so remorselessly, and with such awful, such majestic 

 violence, that it were impious to whimper. Who beach- 

 combed my three rudders, the one toilfully adzed out in 

 one piece from the beautiful heart of a bean-tree log, 

 another cunningly fitted with a sliding fin, and that of red 

 cedar with famous brass mountings ? Who owns the pair 

 of ballast tanks once mine? Who the buoy deemed 

 securely moored ? Who the paddles and the rowlocks 

 and the signal halyards, lost because of Neptune's whims 

 and violence ? Beachcombing is a nicely adjusted, if not 

 quite an exact art. Not once but several times has the 

 libertine Neptune scandalously seduced punts and dinghies 

 from the respectable precincts of Brammo Bay, and having 

 philandered with them for a while, cynically abandoned 

 them with a bump on the mainland beach, and only once 

 has he sent a punt in return a poor, soiled, tar-besmirched, 

 disorderly waif that was reported to the police and re- 

 luctantly claimed. 



A mind inclined to casuistry, could it not defend 

 Beachcombing ? Does not the law recognise it under the 

 definition of trover ? Why bother about the law and the 

 moralities when it is all so pleasing, so engrossing, and so 

 fair? 



The Beachcomber wants no extensive establishment. 



