62 THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE. 



above the sea-level, he found himself in bright sunshine, 

 with the fog spread below him, like a plain of cotton. On 

 this surface his shadow was projected, the head surrounded, 

 at some distance, by a circling halo of rainbow colours. 

 This is the rare Arctic appearance known as the fog-bow, 

 or fog-circle. On the third morning, still sailing in blind 

 fog, the vessel got into the harbour of St. Mary's. It 

 proved a dreary, desolate place indeed. There were 

 perhaps three or four hundred inhabitants, almost all of the 

 fisherman or labourer class, and for the most part Irish. 

 There were two mercantile establishments — the principal, 

 which the Carbonear firm had recently purchased ; and 

 another, of much humbler pretensions, kept by a genial, 

 jovial, twinkling little old Englishman, named William 

 Phippard, who also filled the office of stipendiary magistrate. 

 The manager of Elson's was one John W. Martin, a Poole 

 man, the son of a certain Mr. Martin who was a little fat 

 man, with a merry laugh and a loud chirping voice, a jest 

 ever on his lips, as he bustled hither and thither, who had 

 been in Gosse's boyhood one of the familiar objects of 

 Poole life. There was nothing genial about his son, John 

 W. Martin, however ; consequential and bumptious in his 

 deportment, he enjoyed wielding his rod of authority, and 

 soon began to make his new clerk feel it. At the first 

 meal young Gosse ate with his new chief, the latter took 

 his intellectual measure. Gosse asked if there were any 

 Indians in the neighbourhood. " What ! you mean," said 

 Martin, " the abo — abo — abo — reeginees ? " affecting learn- 

 ing, but pronouncing the awful word with' the greatest 

 difficulty. Martin began at once to bore the young man 

 with constant petty tyrannies, which, after the liberty to 

 which he had become accustomed at Carbonear, were very 

 galling. One day on the wharf, among the labourers, where 

 Gosse was doing some duty or other, Martin took offence, 



