it seems to be happening again. There are Marah and Hugh, with the sun
going down behind the gorse-bank, across the Lea; and there are the
broken ships floating slowly past, with the perch rising at them; and
there is myself, a very young cub, ignorant of what was about to come
upon me. Perhaps, had I known what was to happen before the leaves of
that spring had fallen, I should have played less light-heartedly, and
given more heed to Mr Evans, the Rector.

Now, on one day in each week, generally on Thursdays, we had rather
longer school hours than on the other days. On these days of extra
work Hugh and I had dinner at the Rectory with Ned Evans, our
schoolmate. After dinner we three boys would wander off together,
generally down to Black Pool, where old Spanish coins (from some
forgotten wreck) were sometimes found in the sand after heavy weather
had altered the lie of the beach. We never found any Spanish coins,
but we always enjoyed our afternoons there. The brook which runs into
the sea there was very good for trout, in the way that Marah showed
us; but we never caught any, for all our pains. In the summer we meant
to bathe from the sands, and all through that beautiful spring we
talked of the dives we would take from the spring-board running out
into the sea. Then we would have great games of ducks and drakes, with
flat pebbles; or games of pebble-dropping, in which our aim was to
drop a stone so that it should make no splash as it entered the water.
But the best game of all was our game of cliff-exploring among the
cliffs on each side of the bay, and this same game gave me the
adventure of my life.

One lovely afternoon towards the end of the May of that year, when we
were grubbing among the cliff-gorse as usual, wondering how we could
get down the cliffs to rob the sea-birds' nests, we came to a bare