142 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



box or gold? Sir Knight, I feel not the least 

 alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For 

 though they love fellow-creature with umbrella 

 down again and golden store. Sir Knight they 

 what a tremendous one love honour and virtue 

 more : For though they love Stewards with a bull's 

 eye bright, they'll trouble you for your ticket, sir — 

 rough passage to-night ! 



I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of 

 human weakness and inconsistency, but I no 

 sooner became conscious of those last words from 

 the steward than I began to soften towards Calais. 

 Whereas I have been vindictively wishing that 

 those Calais burghers who came out of their town 

 by a short cut into the History of England, with 

 those fatal ropes round their necks by which they 

 have since been towed into so many cartoons, had 

 all been hanged on the spot, I now begin to regard 

 them as highly respectable and virtuous trades- 

 men. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape 

 Grisnez well astern of the boat on the davits to 

 leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour un- 

 deniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and 

 shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not 

 to say of attachment to Calais, begin to e.xpand 

 my bosom. I have weak notions that I will stay 

 there a day or two on my way back. A faded and 

 recumbent stranger pausing in a profound reverie 

 over the rim of a basin, asks me what kind of 



