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This "lingula" rests upon a base of terra firma whose westernmost projection is Indian Point. From the latter runs northwards the "infamous" Indian Bar, compared by old sailors with a lengthened Bill of Portland; a reef some three miles long, which the waves assault with prodigious fury; a terror to slavers, especially in our autumn, when the squalls and storms begin.

In a clear between squalls he saw us, and, like a brick, rowed his boat out he and his boy, and a devil of a pull they must have had. I was glad enough to see them no, that's not true; I was in such a fury of disgust and shame that I believe I should have been idiot enough to say I didn't want help, if he hadn't just nipped on board and started work.

About nine in the morning, in a burst of wintry sun between two squalls of hail, I had my first look of Holland a line of windmills birling in the breeze. It was besides my first knowledge of these daft-like contrivances, which gave me a near sense of foreign travel and a new world and life.

Admiral Bluewater was in the act of opening his eyes, when the splash of the first bucket of water was heard on the deck of the Cæsar, and he lay in the species of enjoyment which is so peculiar to naval men, after they have risen to the station of commander; a sort of semi-trance, in which the mind summons all the ancient images, connected with squalls; reefing top-sails in the rain; standing on the quarter of a yard, shouting "haul out to leeward;" peering over the weather hammock-cloths to eye the weather, with the sleet pricking the face like needles; and, washing decks!

He catches at it, thinks he'll make sure of the contents of the pockets anyhow, in case he should be parted from it, bends right over the stern, and in one of these heavy squalls, or in the cross-swell of two steamers, or in not being quite prepared, or through all or most or some, gets a lurch, overbalances and goes head-foremost overboard. Now see!

"Hurroo! look out for squalls," here cried the intrepid Hibernian; for at this moment one of Paixhans' shells fell into the counterscarp of the demilune on which they were standing, and sent a ravelin and a couple of embrasures flying about their ears.

Then there was the giant Aegir, who brought in squalls from the sea, and made whirlpools in the fiords." "Why, that is like Nipen." "Very like Nipen; perhaps the same. This god Balder was the sun. Then there were the three magical women, the Fates, who made men's lives happy or miserable.

Life had become cheap and tawdry, a beastly and inarticulate thing, a soulless stirring of the ooze and slime. I held on to the weather rail, close by the shrouds, and gazed out across the desolate foaming waves to the low-lying fog- banks that hid San Francisco and the California coast. Rain- squalls were driving in between, and I could scarcely see the fog.

Billy Pitt took the tiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It was very thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as of tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high, but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolled and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour.

It was not until just before he set forth at two the next afternoon to attend, by special appointment, a meeting of the cabinet in the council chamber at the Castle that he encountered the first symptom of squalls ahead. He had sent his secretary to the Castle with a brief note suggesting an early conference.