I had to get some food on ‘tick.’  This was all very well for a day or two, but after I had been a week in Braye, with no prospect of getting away, the landlord of the tavern from which I obtained my food, told me that as I was a perfect stranger to him he could not afford, to keep me any longer on credit.  What security could I give him for further food?  This was a poser, but the end of it was that I left my whole kit in pawn with him, including even my watch.  At length, on the twelfth morning after my arrival the sea became calm enough for me to proceed, and with a west wind I was in Guernsey Harbour four hours after leaving Braye.  I think this was the most adventurous voyage I ever made, as it took me sixteen days to make two hundred and fifty miles.  I think if the pay was a guinea an hour I should not care about again crossing the Channel during an equinoxial gale, especially to be skipper and crew of such a midge as the ‘Dewdrop.’”

“That’s what I call a decent little yarn, Alec,—­multum in parvo—­one that might be drawn out into quite a long story, and if it were in the hands of some men they would so spin it out, that the telling would occupy almost as many hours as you were days on the voyage.  Nothing like condensing the agony and expanding the joy in a yarn, it makes the listeners in a better mode, and more sociable with each other.”

“Sociability,” said Alec, “among seafaring men is pretty general.  It is usually ‘Hail, fellow, well met!’ with us, for we endeavour to get all the fun we can out of life, because we know that whenever he gets the chance, Death will have his gibe at us.  A sailor must, of necessity, often face death, and therefore his motto is, ’Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die’; and death does come to him frequently when least he expects it.  I’ll tell you an instance of this in which I and some of my relatives were concerned.

“Nine miles from the shore of my native village there is a most dreadful sand-bank, in the form of the letter U, which at low tide is frequently bare, while at high tide not more than two fathoms of water cover it.  It has been a death-trap to many a stout vessel, and at the time I am speaking of had nothing near it in the form of a lighthouse, lightship, or even a buoy to mark its dread presence.  At daybreak on a rough November morning the look-out on duty discovered that a small trading schooner was fast on the sands, and after the usual half-hour’s excitement in the village the surf boat, containing eleven men, was launched and proceeded to the wreck.  There was quite a little party of my family aboard, as beside myself, the crew also contained my father, brother, and two cousins.