have written on that so far as the fun of writing was concerned. For
picking up moorings is a far more tricky and amusing business than
Getting It up. It differs with every conceivable circumstance of wind,
and tide, and harbour, and rig, and freeboard, and light; and then there
are so many stories to tell about it! As--how once a poor man picked up
a rich man's moorings at Cowes and was visited by an aluminium boat, all
splendid in the morning sun. Or again--how a stranger who had made
Orford Haven (that very difficult place) on the very top of an
equinoctial springtide, picked up a racing mark-buoy, taking it to be
moorings, and dragged it with him all the way to Aldborough, and that
right before the town of Orford, so making himself hateful to the Orford
people.

But I digress....




The Reveillon


There was in the regiment with which I served a man called Frocot,
famous with his comrades because he had seen The Dead, for this
experience, though common among the Scotch, is rare among the French, a
sister nation. This man Frocot could neither write nor read, and was
also the strongest man I ever knew. He was quite short and exceedingly
broad, and he could break a penny with his hands, but this gift of
strength, though young men value it so much, was thought little of
compared with his perception of unseen things, for though the men, who
were peasants, professed to laugh at it, and him, in their hearts they