still beside the platform be had rassing little ceremony, of whom dressed me a fly with no equip- I was one, were assembled in ment but the knife and his a row on the platform at the blunt fingers and broken nails. end of the hall, and in turn I filled a basket with it in the made a brief speech of thanks. course of the day, and it re- My turn came last, and on its poses in my fly-book yet, with conclusion I scrambled hastily one other of Tom's dressing, from the dais, and plunged

The termination of the Great into the heated throng making War had invested the surviving for the door. Here I came warriors of the village with a face to face with Toom Sarni. glamour of gallantry which He spoke no word, but thrust their friends and kinsmen de- into my hand, with a mystericided to recognise by the public ous gesture that had something bestowal of commemorative masonic about it, a twist of medallions. The ceremony took paper. place in the public hall in the I opened it under the flickerpresence of as many of the ing glare of the gas - lamp community as could be pushed, across the black and muddy levered, jammed, and wedged road, and found lying in my within its confines. The blush- palm, dressed with exquisite ing victims of this intimate and craftsmanship, a Coch-y-bondhu touching, though very embar- fly.

V.

To turn the pages further sound of the river alters to is to invite the mind to wander another key. The shrill voices farther afield. The parchment are thin and remote, somehow leaves lying open on my knee menacing. ... Northern Spain glow with colour; my ears are no longer, but a shallow river full of the sound of rushing in Labrador, with the moswater and women's voices. I quitoes humming in a relentless am standing on the bank of cloud round my head-net. A a swift-flowing Galician river, sea-trout, well and truly hooked, and below me a row of girls makes his last exhausted leap. with bright kerchiefs bound The smoke of the "smudge round their heads are washing to windward drifts across the linen. ... Fir-trees and gran- eyes, blurring all vision. ite boulders, and the grey walls It clears again to show the of the village high up and hard river widened to a vast expanse of outline against the eternal of water-in fact, no river at blue of the sky. “Inglez, all, but a steel-blue lake in the Inglez !” cry the shrill voices, Laurentian Hills, fringed with growing fainter. The blue of hemlock and holding in the the sky changes to grey. The mirror of its surface the reflec

.

tion of a single star. The the motionless air, a breathless North-American Indian behind pause, a dark upheaval of the me stirs his paddle, and the water, whirr ! Got him ! canoe glides forward half a I turned to laugh triumphdozen yards. Will the light antly at the Indian, but he hold until the big chap we are had vanished. Where he sat stalking rises once more ? An- there was an English lawn, other and another star appears ; and I was laughing at a barea gaggle of geese pass far off legged figure in a pink smock across the afterglow; some- dancing towards me. where ashore a hidden bird “ Tea’s ready!” calls harshly out of the forest. I rose to my feet, slipping the The stillness seems to hold fly-book into my pocket. suspense imprisoned in iron “And please hurry !” bands. Have

we put him “Why?" down! Another imperceptible 'Cos there's new strawberry stroke with the paddle. A jam.” dimple and a series of concen

“ Good !" I replied. Hand

. tric rings widen suddenly on in - hand we

in - hand we approached the the surface ahead. A movement house, united in that joy of of the wrist and elbow, the anticipation which outweighs swish of the silk line through all the glamour of the past.

TWO GREAT SHIPWRECKS.

BY DAVID HANNAY.

In the year 1735 Dom Ber- own experience—to Portuguese nardo Gomes de Brito, Portu- shipwrecks. They were in no guese man of letters, published danger of being gravelled for a book at Lisbon, and it is a lack of matter. One out of very

useful companion to four, or in the later days of studies for any one who hap- Portugal's importance in the pens to be looking into the East, one out of three of their early days of European navi- carracks and galleons foundered gation in Eastern seas. The or were stranded on the way name of it is ' Historia Tragico out or home. This could not Maritima.' A translation is have been the case if there surely not necessary, for every- had not been mismanagement

, body knows at once that what and bad seamanship in the Bernardo Gomes de Brito pub- navigating, and shocking neglilished and dedicated to King gence or corruption in the John V. is a history of ship- fitting out of the ships. But wrecks. His three volumes are there was

more against all well printed on good paper,

who sailed the Eastern seas in and when bound, as they ought the fifteenth century and later to be, in Spanish calf, do credit too. The rigging was ill-adto the press of Lisbon, and justed, the vessels were weakly

, look well on a shelf. Nor is constructed. Nautical instrutheir merit by any means con

ments were poor.

It was posfined to their outside. Their sible to ascertain the latitude, matter is authentic and ade- the position of places north quately worded. Dom Ber- and south, when you could nardo did not compose the land and use your mariner's narratives which fill his volumes astrolabe or your backstaff on entirely by himself. He col- firm ground. The longitudes, lected the reports of contem- the eastness or westness so to poraries and survivors, of whom speak, of places could never be some were Jesuit missionaries, fixed with a near approach to or he reprinted the accounts accuracy. As for charts, every

. published at the time by au- seaman knew that no faith was thority. They are in the main to be placed in them. Mapreadable, and they are, to the making was a learned business honour of the writers be it in the sixteenth century, and said, surprisingly candid. in that age learning had an

The authors, and that again awful reverence for the authoris to be noted by way of praise, ity of the Greeks and Romans. kept to happenings within their It was impossible for a scholar

Their cap

as he

to believe that illiterate sea- Their wrecks form an essential faring men who did not know part of their history in the Greek by sight, or more Latin East. Mr Theal has to record than the prayers they were some in his volume on The taught to repeat by rote, could Portuguese in South Africa.' be better informed than Ptolemy But the “Merchants of London or Strabo. Moreover, the hasty trading to the East" did not observations of the sailors them- escape such losses. selves, taken in thick weather, tains and factors were not so went down on charts, and virtuous as to be wholly instayed there too, far into the capable of misconduct and folly. eighteenth century. No wonder We hear of a sbip engaged in if experienced mariners, when a port to port voyage out there speaking or writing for the which capsized because her instruction of beginners, dwelt skipper bad overloaded and on the untrustworthiness of all misloaded her in pure greed charts. They never marked for his own benefit all the dangers, and those they thought. Sir Thomas Dale did indicate were commonly lost the best vessel in his put down at the wrong place. squadron in 1618 by stranding Therefore, said the wisdom of on the island Engaño off the age,

which had often been Straits of Sunda. Three years bought at a great price, trust earlier Sir David Middleton only in “ God and a good look- was lost in a storm on the out -station men aloft to coast of Madagascar. The great report, keep a sharp eye on Trades Increase, the largest the colour of the water, anchor merchant ship so far built in by night if your lead warns England, launched in the presyou that you are getting into ence of King James I. and shallow water, and wait for Henry, Prince of Wales, perdaylight. It was all true for ished by fire on the coast of English and Dutch as well as Java. She was the flagship for Portuguese. If they suf- of Sir Henry Middleton, who fered more than we, or the commanded the Sixth Voyage. Hollanders, it was not because He had beached her for repairs, they were all ignorant. There and our version of the story were Portuguese seamen who was that envious Portuguese knew whatever could be within rivals bribed natives to set the knowledge of their genera- her alight. The Javans said tion. Their wisdom cried aloud that she was burnt by the in the streets of Goa and of divinity who ruled

on that Lisbon, but greed and corrup- beach, to punish Sir Henry tion were deaf, and so no man Middleton for refusing to offer marked them.

a sacrifice; and apparently it Therefore it was that the is true that Sir Henry did Portuguese suffered more than refuse to homologate a pagan did we or the Netherlanders. practice. So, in the opinion

of the orthodox of Java, he Bay of Cambaya in 1617, but brought on himself the loss was able to save crew, goods,

of his ship by fire, and his own and money - chest. With all death at Bantam. Pieter Both, well in hand he marched to the first Governor-General of Surat. Our factory was fairly the Dutch possessions, died, established by this time, and even as did Sir David Middleton. Pieter van den Broeck offered

A mere record of strandings to buy a ship from the factors, and founderings is but “old who had one to sell. But on almanac.” We need the testi- that occasion they proved themmony of survivors, and they selves not wise, but only too must show us our fellow-men clever by half. “If,” so they doing and suffering notable reflected, “we sell him the

, things before a shipwreck can ship he will go on to the Red be raised to the dignity of Sea, and cut in ahead of us.” romance by becoming a picture So they refused. The Dutchof human character good and man took the refusal calmly, bad. Such records are nowise and then did a thing which to seek in the early days of was “a cooling card ” for the European adventure in the factors. He hired a storeArabian Sea, or, indeed, any- house, put a supercargo or two where along the shores of Africa in it with the goods he had or beyond the Cape. The saved, and orders to sell them wrecks of those days have a in the local market. Then peculiar flavour. It was not the Company's servants realised often that the survivors had that by spoiling his chance of the consolation of catching reaching the Red Sea, they had sight of a gallows which gave only promoted the settlement them assurance that they were of a very formidable comin a civilised country. When petitor in trade right opposite their ship was in fragments on their own front door. Now the beach, or they had struggled they would gladly have sold to the shore in boats, they were him the ship. But Mynheer thrown into savagery, or, at Pieter let them know that he the best, barbarism. The wreck who will not when he may, was commonly only the begin- when he will he shall have nay. ning of the tale.

He refused, and leaving goods No modern seafaring man and salesmen behind him, he can hope to have such a marched across India from noble experience as the Dutch- Gujerat to Masulipatam with man Pieter van den Broeck. all his men. By keeping good This Netherlander, a man of discipline, by paying his way many adventures and of mixed where people were friendly, reputation, came into the Indian and by aiming low and firing

natives of the Ocean to explore the possi- straight a bilities of trade in the Red looty-wallah type tried to moSea. He was wrecked in the lest him, he ranged along the

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