270 ALONGSHORE v 



four days of It we happened to see a railway poster 

 which brought the Continent within hail. 



'There's very cheap tickets to Boulogne, Jim. 

 Shall us go to France?' 



'Had us better to?' 



'Why not?' 



'Upsail, then. Give the order. You'm 

 skipper here. How many hundreds of miles is 

 it to France herefrom?' 



Jim has sailed a twenty-foot open boat from 

 Devon to Kent, has run across Folkestone Bay 

 under bare poles in a gale, and fetched the harbour 

 amid cheers, but he has hardly yet succeeded in 

 realising that France is not an island, or where on 

 the face of the globe It Is. He did not do 

 geography at school, and It doesn't much matter; 

 for the coast he knows, he does know. 



Our start was not promising. On the previous 

 evening, lounging around a log fire, we had 

 smoked cigars, and had drunk red wine, and Jim 

 had sung sea-songs. The uncustomary wine, the 

 cigars, did It. Jim's face could not lose Its 

 weathered tan and red, but It was white, white 

 underneath. His description of his head Is Inde- 

 scribable. He, a seaman, was very nearly sea-sick 

 on the cross-Channel steamer. Upon our third- 



