me over. in a manner that almost tripped I kicked at it savagely. It kicked savagely back at me in return. Now a sea-boot does not as a rule act upon its own responsibility. For a fraction of an instant I gazed at it in astonishment, and the next I was down upon my knees hauling it out of the mass of rubbish. There was no doubt about it, the sea-boot fiercely resented the operation. A second boot appeared and took up the cause of its neighbour, and then, assisted by the signalman, I drew a protesting body forth crowned by the rubicund countenance of the lost "skipper." "Wa' are you trying t' do?" said that gentleman. "We'd best cancel that there signal," whispered the signalman in awestruck tones. "It is the captain." "Yes, of course; just you show a leg, my lad, and cancel the darned signal." I followed the signalman up the hatchway with all speed. The gunner, however, had a better way. He had remained on the bridge, and was directing operations. He tumbled instantly to the fact that the captain had been discovered, and clapping one hand over the mouth of the horn which the other signalman of the watch was manipulating, he jerked over the telegraph to full speed ahead. The mysterious bellowing out of the fog suddenly ceased. To the listeners in the distance, anxious requests for a repetition remained unanswered. The ghostly image of a destroyer faded into the pall of whiteness, and she was heard no more. She had not succeeded in revealing her identity, though she had reported that her captain had been drowned. Meanwhile the hero of the occasion slept peacefully among the debris under the wardroom table. It is a curious thing that the subconscious mind appears to be aware of the difference between a real emergency and an unimportant incident. An officer who is exceedingly difficult to wake under ordinary circumstances will often wake at the mere change of a few revolutions in the speed, and be up on the bridge before there has been time to inform him of the reason. When the sleeper has turned in with orders that he is to be called under certain conditions he will wake immediately they are fulfilled. Thus, when I sent down about an hour later to report that I could make out St Abbs Head, the messenger returned with the reply, Very good. Ask the officer of the watch to let me know the time when it draws abeam." The captain was lying in the position to which we had last dragged him. I left the deck in charge of the gunner, who had not cared to turn in, and went below to get a cup of cocoa. The captain was wideawake and greeted me with a seraphic smile. 'Hulloa," he said, "look at all this water." "Aren't you rather wet, sir?" "Wet," said he; "not a bit of it. I'm as safe as houses." having been disturbed in his slumbers and of having resented it. 'Yes, I know, sir," I explained, "I was very much put out. Nobody could find you, and I was sure you must I proceeded to make two cups have fallen overboard." I had never seen my chief really drunk. He did not seem a bit like it now. "Yes, please, I'm much too comfortable to stir just now. I see the wind has gone down; she's much easier. Made a stinking mess of things last night, didn't she?" Again I ventured to suggest that he must be absolutely soaked with salt water. And then he showed me. He lay supported on a bunch of oilskins that had taken charge, and which now formed a sort of shifting island. More or less anchored by his seaboots, which had been jambed between the table leg and the stanchion, the upper part of his body could not travel very far. The stiff oilskin, cupped by his body in the centre, formed a rampart against any encroaching water. He was, as he had expressed it, safe as houses and quite snug. He had some recollection of THE STRAITS AND ARCHES. BY DAVID HANNAY. In ministration and destructive in piracy, which is the natural offspring of vicious rule. earlier times than the Middle Ages, and, in fact, almost to our days, the pirate was a known and common danger in the Cyclades which lie round Delos, and among the Sporades which fringe the coast of Asia Minor. To the Greeks he was familiar, and if the Roman Empire made a naval station at Carpathos, the Scarpanto of the moderns, one reason was that this arid rock lies between Rhodes and Crete, and is conveniently placed to be a post for galleys told off to watch for and pounce upon skimmers of the sea coming and going. But the ancient Greeks and Romans lived very long before the British seaman WHEN the British sailor of of what is odious in bad adold was outward bound to the Mediterranean, he said he was going on a voyage to "The Straits" or (when not and) "The Arches." He ranked all the Western waters and coasts under the first name, and all the Eastern under the second. The whole sea, so Admiral Smyth truly says, may be called a "vast strait gulf." The Firth of Forth westward of Queensferry and the Firth of Tay all along are strait gulfs estuaries with a narrow entrance. But in old sea terminology, it is probable that nothing more was meant than the half or so of the Mediterranean which you reach directly by way of Gibraltar. The Arches, for their part, were just short for archipelago, but only for that particular swarm of islands which ranges east--who alone concerns us hereward from the Morea to the southern shores of Asia Minor and towards Syria. The sailor did not abbreviate other archipelagos. When he said he was bound for the Arches, nobody would suppose that he meant the world of islands eastward of Sumatra, or the Antilles. Now the Arches presented a kind of concentration of the whole Mediterranean. All its good and its evil were drawn together, and of the second there was much in the form VOL. CCXXII.-NO. MCCCXLI. began to frequent the Levant. Our present business is with our own man, with what he saw and did, his merits and his sins. When the founders of the Levant Company came to look at the field they were to work, they were met, first and foremost, by what is there nowthe natural conditions. Our Admiral W. H. Smyth, who carried out the only survey of the Mediterranean we had so far attempted, gives a sum D 2 "Such is the archipelago, the navigation of which is easy and pleasing enough in general, most of the islands being high, as well as precipitous and bold-to (i.e., the water is deep up to the land, and free from shoals), with a delicious climate. But a good look-out must be kept, for there are very sudden and fresh squalls; and at times there is much bad and even dangerous weather in the winter. In such cases, the waves, having little room to extend themselves, make a confused sea, rising to a considerable height, and breaking with fury against opposing coasts and rocks. Moreover, there is a very great depth of water between the isles-usually no bottom with 150 fathoms of line out at a short distance from the shore. These interesting islands are thinly peopled, and some of them may indeed be considered as scarcely inhabited. There is, however, an animated traffic, the imports being suited to the wants and wishes of the islanders, to most of whom necessity has given a seafaring disposition." mary which is too good not lady's sea, and therefore liable to be quoted. to occasional tantrums, just enough to train you to keep a sharp look-out to windward, and stand by to shorten sail in a smart way. The dangers of winter weather need hardly be considered, for at that season the trading ships of old were mostly in port. The sea rover could lay his boat up for an overhaul, could take his rest "aswing with good tobacco in a net between the trees or under a roof, and could "listen to the roar of the breakers" at the foot of the cliff with a sense of full security. The inhabitants were quite equal to forming the basis of piratical crews. Even those wicked German critics, Fallmerayer and other sinners, who have insulted modern Greeks by giving SO many plausible looking reasons for denying that they descend from the Hellenes, allow that if the Hellenic blood still flows pure anywhere it is in the veins of the islanders. The ancient Greek was a pirate in his mother's womb. Even supposing that the islesmen are Hellenic, they have been freely recruited by other wandering elements. All such as do naturally tend to the cave of Adullam have found their advantage in "going to the Levant." Did not our friend Admiral Smyth come across a certain Murad Reis, who commanded the 'fleet "of the Basha of Tripoli ? And did he not learn that Murad Reis was in sad fact a renegade Scot of the name of Lyell? And of such as he Here was a home for all mariners, and more especially for such as were of predatory disposition-plenty of water, a clean shore, much visible high land, a good supply of anchorages, population enough to supply you with food and refuges, which are also takingoff places for a cruise. It is a there has never been any lack in the Arches. The conditions of their life made seamen of them. They helped to row the galleys of St Mark, though the Venetian captains did not like them, for they were dirty, were sea lawyers, and given to desertion. But, then, they had been bred early to the sea and to tugging at the oar, could stand exposure, and go on rowing when Dalmatians or Venetians had broken down. Two conditions only could have kept the Arches free of piracy. One would have been that they lay far off on the road to nowhere. But they lie across, or just on, the flank of all the trade routes of the eastern Mediterranean from the Dardanelles to Egypt, and from Italy to Syria. The other was that the islands should be in the hands of a power capable of enforcing law and order, and resolved to shut out the pirate from all refuges and markets, for the ruffian must have food and rest, and he plunders to sell. From the decline of the Eastern Empire, which may fairly be said to have been born in a state of senile decay, down to about the day before yesterday, there was no government in the Arches-except what was bad. Because they lay on or just beside the seaways, they were swept by every conquering and destructive horde on its way from east to west, or west to east. Barbarous invaders of the empire, Moslem fanatics who firmly held the doctrine that the Christian was given to them for a prey and for a spoil; retaliating Christians, who could see no sin in plundering and killing Mahometans; and on the top of it, and perhaps the worst of it all, came the shifting fritter of little "Latin municipalities which were born out of the decadence and corruption of the Crusades. The traders of the Italian cities, with Venice and Genoa at their head, plundered one another and all others. The Knights of the Hospital, or of St John, who called themselves "The Religion," raided indefatigably from their headquarters at Rhodes. When Solyman the Magnificent, or Magnanimous, drove them from their beautiful island in 1520, he had, as a ruler, a most valid most valid excuse. After they were established in Malta by the Emperor Charles V., they went on as before. How did commerce survive at all, and how did the travellers we hear of contrive to move about when Sallee rovers were prowling just outside the Straits of Gibraltar, when the Algerines infested the western Mediterranean, and when the seas from Crete to the Dardanelles were so full of pirates that all who could afford the expense took the long and costly overland route when they were bound to go to Constantinople? As for the trade, we have to bear in mind that the plunderers were always ready to sell what they had taken by violence. They robbed in one place and traded in an |