figures, all with businesses of their own.

It was very odd.

He pushed back the schoolroom door and blinked at the sudden light.




CHAPTER V

THE SEA-CAPTAIN


I


Very few matter-of-fact citizens of the present-day world will
understand the part that the sea used to play in our young lives
thirty years ago in Polchester.

It is very easy to look at the map and say that the sea is a
considerable distance from Polchester, and that even if you stood on
the highest ridge of the highest cornfield above the town you would
not be able to catch the faintest glimpse of it. That may be true,
although I myself can never be completely assured, possessing so
vividly as I do a memory of a day when I stood with my nurse at the
edge of Merazion Woods and, gazing out to the horizon, saw a fleet
of ships full-sail upon the bluest of seas, and would not be
persuaded that it was merely wrack of clouds. That may be or no; the