of Wight, and that tower, tinged a faint evening red in the salt
wind-haze, was the lighthouse on St. Catherine's Point.

My skipper recovered first from his astonishment. His bulging eyes
sank back gradually into their orbits. His psychology, taking it
all round, was really very creditable for an average sailor. He
had been spared the humiliation of laying his ship to with a fair
wind; and at once that man, of an open and truthful nature, spoke
up in perfect good faith, rubbing together his brown, hairy hands--
the hands of a master-craftsman upon the sea:

"Humph! that's just about where I reckoned we had got to."

The transparency and ingenuousness, in a way, of that delusion, the
airy tone, the hint of already growing pride, were perfectly
delicious. But, in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises
ever sprung by the clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of
the most accomplished of his courtiers.



XXVIII.



The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
amongst the powers of the sea. They have no territory of their
own; they are not reigning winds anywhere. Yet it is from their
houses that the reigning dynasties which have shared between them
the waters of the earth are sprung. All the weather of the world