nothing to do, until the deck-steward came round with tea, but watch the
islanders swarming around us in their cockles and diving for sixpences
and shillings, which they caught impartially with their fingers and
toes. With so many all shouting and gesticulating, one could not venture
one's silver indiscriminately; one must employ some particular diver,
and I selected for my investments a poor young fellow who had lost an
arm. With his one hand and his two feet he never failed of the coin I
risked, and I wish they had been many enough to enable him to retire
from the trade, which even in that mild air kept him visibly shivering
when out of the water. I do not know his name, but I commend him to
future travellers by the token of his pathetic mutilation.

By-and-by we felt the gentle stir of the steamer under us; the last
tender went ashore, and the divers retired in their cockles from our
side. Funchal began to rearrange the lines of her streets, while keeping
those of her roofs and house-walls and terraced gardens. We passed out
of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had
entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain,
which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of
our lives.




II

TWO UP-TOWN BLOCKS INTO SPAIN


There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of