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With muffled oars they pulled up the harbour. They could just make out the vessels as they lay floating in silence on the calm water, a light wind blowing off-shore. The boats got close up to the brig before they were discovered.

By dint of Herculean efforts they had managed to get it to the water's edge. The oars from the two small boats of the Kincaid, which had been washed away by an off-shore wind the very night that the party had landed, had been in use to support the canvas of the sailcloth tents.

Years rolled on, and dwellers on the sea-coast became more and more venturous in their voyages along the shore. It behoved them to have larger boats, or barges, with numerous rowers, who would naturally carry weapons with them to guard themselves from foes. War-galleys sprang into being. Strong winds sometimes carried these off-shore, and out of sight of land.

No man may mate with the off-shore wind and come back on the heels of the years." "I have come back," Nam-Bok answered simply. "Mayhap thou art a shadow, then, a passing shadow of the Nam-Bok that was. Shadows come back." "I am hungry. Shadows do not eat." But Opee-Kwan doubted, and brushed his hand across his brow in sore puzzlement.

Now Achille Picard bent his shoulders to lift into free water the stem of the canoe from its touch on the bank. It floated, caught gently by the back wash of the stronger off-shore current. "Good-by, dear," called Mrs. Cockburn. "Remember us!" She pressed the Doctor's arm closer to her side. The Doctor waved his hand, not trusting his masculine self-control to speak.

From the perch of her lofty reconnaissance she had espied the painter working at his canvas, but her notion of visiting him she knew had been born not this morning, but last night when she had sat alone on the terrace and watched the pale moon wreathing fitfully among the clouds which hovered uncertainly off-shore.

They are all off again before midsummer, and make their appearance on the ``off-shore ground. We saw some fine ``schools'' of sperm whales, which are easily distinguished by their spout, blowing away, a few miles to windward, on our passage to San Juan.

Captain Headland stood in for the Mahe Roads, in the hopes that some of the enemy's privateers or merchantmen might be anchored there, and might be cut out without detaining him long. The opportunity must not be lost. The wind favoured them, for, instead of blowing off-shore as it generally does, the sea-breeze carried them swiftly towards the harbour. Eager eyes were on the look-out.

The off-shore wind blew keen and chill, and the black-massed clouds behind it gave promise of bitter weather. "Out of the sea thou earnest," Opee-Kwan chanted oracularly, "and back into the sea thou goest. Thus is balance achieved and all things brought to law." Bask-Wah-Wan limped to the froth-mark and cried, "I bless thee, Nam-Bok, for that thou remembered me."

Before our engines, which fortunately held firm, were working again, we had drifted helplessly over to the Corean coast, and it was all we could do to claw off-shore until the tempest abated, which it did very suddenly, as it had risen. As the wind fell, we ran under the lee of an island, oblong, high, and thickly wooded, not far from a heavy promontory of the coast.