and crowding ships, were all children of yesterday; and for centuries
before, the obscure life of the natives, with its glories and ambitions,
its joys and crimes and agonies, had rolled unseen, like the mountain
river, in that sea-girt place. Not Chaldea appeared more ancient, nor
the Pyramids of Egypt more abstruse; and I heard time measured by
"the drums and tramplings" of immemorial conquests, and saw myself
the creature of an hour. Over the bankruptcy of Pinkerton and Dodd,
of Montana Block, S. F., and the conscientious troubles of the junior
partner, the spirit of eternity was seen to smile.

To this mood of philosophic sadness, my excesses of the night before no
doubt contributed; for more things than virtue are at times their own
reward: but I was greatly healed at least of my distresses. And while I
was yet enjoying my abstracted humour, a turn of the beach brought me in
view of the signal-station, with its watch-house and flag-staff, perched
on the immediate margin of a cliff. The house was new and clean and
bald, and stood naked to the Trades. The wind beat about it in loud
squalls; the seaward windows rattled without mercy; the breach of the
surf below contributed its increment of noise; and the fall of my foot
in the narrow verandah passed unheard by those within.

There were two on whom I thus entered unexpectedly: the look-out
man, with grizzled beard, keen seaman's eyes, and that brand on his
countenance that comes of solitary living; and a visitor, an oldish,
oratorical fellow, in the smart tropical array of the British
man-o'-war's man, perched on a table, and smoking a cigar. I was
made pleasantly welcome, and was soon listening with amusement to the
sea-lawyer.

"No, if I hadn't have been born an Englishman," was one of his