had enough of it and sat down, then another, then three or four

together; and when all had left off with mutters and growling
half-laughs the sound of hearty chuckling became audible,

persistent, unnoticed. The cowled grandfather was very much
entertained somewhere within his hood.

He had not joined in the shouting of jokes, neither had he moved
the least bit. He had remained quietly in his place against the

foot of the mast. I had been given to understand long before
that he had the rating of a second-class able seaman (matelot

leger) in the fleet which sailed from Toulon for the conquest of
Algeria in the year of grace 1830. And, indeed, I had seen and

examined one of the buttons of his old brown, patched coat, the
only brass button of the miscellaneous lot, flat and thin, with

the words Equipages de ligne engraved on it. That sort of
button, I believe, went out with the last of the French Bourbons.

"I preserved it from the time of my navy service," he explained,
nodding rapidly his frail, vulture-like head. It was not very

likely that he had picked up that relic in the street. He looked
certainly old enough to have fought at Trafalgar--or, at any

rate, to have played his little part there as a powder monkey.
Shortly after we had been introduced he had informed me in a

Franco-Provencal jargon, mumbling tremulously with his toothless
jaws, that when he was a "shaver no higher than that" he had seen

the Emperor Napoleon returning from Elba. It was at night, he
narrated vaguely, without animation, at a spot between Frejus and

Antibes, in the open country. A big fire had been lit at the
side of the cross-roads. The population from several villages

had collected there, old and young--down to the very children in
arms, because the women had refused to stay at home. Tall

soldiers wearing high, hairy caps stood in a circle, facing the
people silently, and their stern eyes and big mustaches were

enough to make everybody keep at a distance. He, "being an
impudent little shaver," wriggled out of the crowd, creeping on

his hands and knees as near as he dared to the grenadiers' legs,
and peeping through discovered, standingperfectly still in the

light of the fire, "a little fat fellow in a three-cornered hat,
buttoned up in a long straight coat, with a big, pale face

inclined on one shoulder, looking something like a priest. His
hands were clasped behind his back. . . . It appears that this

was the Emperor," the ancient commented, with a faint sigh. He
was staring from the ground with all his might, when "my poor

father," who had been searching for his boy frantically every
where, pounced upon him and hauled him away by the ear.

The tale seems an authenticrecollection. He related it to me
many times, using the very same words. The grandfather honoured

me by a special and somewhat embarrassing predilection. Extremes
touch. He was the oldest member by a long way in that company,

and I was, if I may say so, its temporarily adopted baby. He had
been a pilot longer than any man in the boat could remember;

thirty--forty years. He did not seem certain himself, but it
could be found out, he suggested, in the archives of the

Pilot-office. He had been pensioned off years before, but he
went out from force of habit; and, as my friend the patron of the

company once confided to me in a whisper, "the old chap did no
harm. He was not in the way." They treated him with rough

deference. One and another would address some insignificant
remark to him now and again, but nobody really took any notice of

what he had to say. He had survived his strength, his
usefulness, his very wisdom. He wore long, green, worsted

stockings pulled up above the knee over his trousers, a sort of
woollen nightcap on his hairless cranium, and wooden clogs on his

feet. Without his hooded cloak he looked like a peasant. Half a
dozen hands would be extended to help him on board, but afterward

he was left pretty much to his own thoughts. Of course he never
did any work, except, perhaps, to cast off some rope when hailed,

"He, l'Ancien! let go the halyards there, at your hand"--or some
such request of an easy kind.

No one took notice in any way of the chuckling within the shadow
of the hood. He kept it up for a long time with intense

enjoyment. Obviously he had preserved intact the innocence of
mind which is easily amused. But when his hilarity had exhausted

itself, he made a professional remark in a self-assertive but
quavering voice:

"Can't expect much work on a night like this."
No one took it up. It was a mere truism. Nothing under canvas

could be expected to make a port on such an idle night of dreamy
splendour and spiritualstillness. We would have to glide idly

to and fro, keeping our station within the appointed bearings,
and, unless a fresh breezesprang up with the dawn, we would land

before sunrise on a small islet that, within two miles of us,
shone like a lump of frozenmoonlight, to "break a crust and take

a pull at the wine bottle." I was familiar with the procedure.
The stout boat emptied of her crowd would nestle her buoyant,

capable side against the very rock--such is the perfectly smooth
amenity of the classic sea when in a gentle mood. The crust

broken and the mouthful of wine swallowed--it was literally no
more than that with this abstemious race--the pilots would pass

the time stamping their feet on the slabs of sea-salted stone and
blowing into their nipped fingers. One or two misanthropists

would sit apart, perched on boulders like manlike sea-fowl of
solitary habits; the sociably disposed would gossip scandalously

in little gesticulating knots; and there would be perpetually one
or another of my hosts taking aim at the empty horizon with the

long, brass tube of the telescope, a heavy, murderous-looking
piece of collective property, everlastingly changing hands with

brandishing and levelling movements. Then about noon (it was a
short turn of duty--the long turn lasted twenty-four hours)

another boatful of pilots would relieve us--and we should steer
for the old Phoenician port, dominated, watched over from the

ridge of a dust-gray, arid hill by the red-and-white striped pile
of the Notre Dame de la Garde.

All this came to pass as I had foreseen in the fullness of my
very recent experience. But also something not foreseen by me

did happen, something which causes me to remember my last outing
with the pilots. It was on this occasion that my hand touched,

for the first time, the side of an English ship.
No fresh breeze had come with the dawn, only the steady little

draught got a more keen edge on it as the eastern sky became
bright and glassy with a clean, colourless light. I t was while

we were all ashore on the islet that a steamer was picked up by
the telescope, a black speck like an insect posed on the hard

edge of the offing. She emerged rapidly to her water-line and
came on steadily, a slim hull with a long streak of smoke

slanting away from the rising sun. We embarked in a hurry, and
headed the boat out for our prey, but we hardly moved three miles

an hour.
She was a big, high-class cargo-steamer of a type that is to be

met on the sea no more--black hull, with low, white
superstructures, powerfully rigged with three masts and a lot of

yards on the fore; two hands at her enormous wheel--steam
steering-gear was not a matter of course in these days--and with

them on the bridge three others, bulky in thick blue jackets,
ruddy-faced, muffled up, with peak caps--I suppose all her

officers. There are ships I have met more than once and known
well by sight whose names I have forgotten; but the name of that

ship seen once so many years ago in the clear flush of a cold,
pale sunrise I have not forgotten. How could I--the first

English ship on whose side I ever laid my hand! The name--I read
it letter by letter on the bow--was James Westoll. Not very

romantic, you will say. The name of a very considerable,
well-known, and universally respected North country ship-owner, I

believe. James Westoll! What better name could an honourable
hard-working ship have? To me the very grouping of the letters