YULETIDE ON A 15-TONNER 173 



change round towards the east, and render the sands 

 almost a dead lee-shore. There was nothing for it, 

 however, but to go below to kill time as best we might, 

 and to listen to the weird discord set up by the sirens 

 and foghorns of the shipping passing slowly up and 

 down the fairway. 



" Jolly way to spend Christmas Eve, old chap ! " 

 grinned my companion, as he raked up his winnings 

 after a long run of luck at ecarte, " but, thank heaven, 

 we've enough grub, tobacco, and whisky aboard to 

 keep us going for a week, if the worst comes to the 

 worst." 



I made no reply, for my thoughts at that moment 

 were miles away, and in imagination I was sitting before 

 the blazing Yule-logs in the wainscotted trophy-hung 

 hall of a certain old manor-house nestling among the 

 tors and heather of that home of the red stag, Exmoor. 



At four o'clock M and myself took a turn on deck 



to find that the snow had cleared suffi.ciently to enable 

 us to descry the distant outline of the snow-clad sea-walls 

 of the marshes on the Essex shore. But what marshes 

 they were neither of us could judge, for we knew not 

 whether the yawl lay to the eastward or to the westward of 

 the river Crouch. We therefore banged on the fore -deck 

 with a thole-pin just over the spot where we guessed 

 Gilson would be snoring in his bunk like a grampus, and 

 a couple of minutes later the grizzled head of the old 

 skipper bobbed up from the fo'c'stle hatchway, muttering, 

 " Odd rot it ! There be no rest for a man aboard a small 



