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One, in the centre of the island, is the site of the village of Canvey; and on one, at the time of the writer's last visit, two fine old Essex rams were sleeping in the sun. There was no flood; the island had not known even a partial one for some years. But true to the instincts of their race, they had occupied the highest ground, though it was only a few feet above the levels.

For five hours in the day it washes the foot of the wharves, for seven a wide expanse of mud stretches away to Canvey Island in front, and Southend Pier to the east. At the wells for Leigh still depends for water on its wells are, during the hours at which water is permitted to be drawn, lines of twenty women and girls with pails, each patiently waiting her turn.

One by one the old landmarks Mucking Lighthouse, the Thames Cattle Wharf, and Hole Haven were left behind, and at last the entrance to the creek that runs round behind Canvey Island came into sight. One would never accuse it of being a cheerful, bustling sort of place at the best of times, but at five o'clock in the morning it seemed the very picture of uninhabited desolation.

The Bessy for so Ben Tripper had named his bawley, after his favourite sister was lying on the mud just above Leigh. A fishy smell pervaded the air, for close by were the boiling-sheds, with their vast heaps of white cockle-shells. These were dug by the cocklers either from the sand at the end of the Canvey Island or on the Maplin Sands somewhere off Shoebury.

But I dessay 'e could potter about with the dam' tub round about as far as Canvey, if 'e keeps it out of the wash of the steamers. He's been at this job two years now, and I shan't be sorry to see my yard shut of it. . . . Must humour the old boy, though. . . . Nigglin' job, mending boots, I reckon. If I mended boots, I'd 'ave to let orf steam summow. Or go on the booze."

It is ten o'clock in the day; the bawleys have returned from the fishing grounds, and scores of them have anchored in the Ray a deep stretch of water lying between the spit of sand that extends from the end of Canvey Island close up to Southend Pier, and the mud-flats of Leigh. The flats are still uncovered, but the tide is rising fast in the winding channel leading up to the village.

"It will be big enough," I returned consolingly, "unless I've made a mistake." "Where are you going to do it?" she asked. "Somewhere at the back of Canvey Island," I said. "There's no one to wake up there except the sea-gulls, and we can be out of sight round the corner before it explodes. I've got about twenty feet of fuse, which will give us at least a quarter of an hour to get away in."

I was told that one morning the craft lying in Hole Haven off Canvey Island were covered with swallows, all too numb to move, but that when the sun came out the greater number flew away towards the sea. The same thing happened on the windmill at Cley, in Norfolk, a famous starting and alighting place for birds.

It was the work of a few minutes to pull in the anchor and haul up the sails, which filled immediately to a slight breeze that had just sprung up from the west. Leaving a still peaceful, if somewhat mutilated, Canvey Island behind us, we started off down the river, gliding along with an agreeable smoothness that fitted in very nicely with my state of mind.

By rights the ship should have been in dock before breakfast; they had planned the night before that an early dawn should see them awake and preparing to land; yet here was eleven o'clock, and from what the more hardy of them could learn by direct questioning of those in authority, they had not as yet passed Canvey Island.