CHAPTER I

THE RETROSPECT

by

ADA CAMBRIDGE

Author of

"Thirty Years in Australia," "Path and Goal," etc.

London

Stanley Paul & Co.

31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.

Colonial Edition.

TO

MY FRIENDS, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN

WHO WERE YOUNG AND HAVE GROWN OLD WITH ME

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

I. Coming Home

II. About Town

III. In Beautiful England

IV. The Home of Childhood

V. Halcyon Days

VI. Earliest Recollections

VII. Old Times and New

VIII. Some Early Sundays

IX. My Grandfather's Days

X. Outdoor Life

XI. At the Seaside

XII. Excursions to Sandringham

XIII. A Trip South

XIV. "Devon, Glorious Devon!"

XV. In the Garden of England

CHAPTER I

COMING HOME

There was a gap of thirty-eight years, almost to a day, between my

departure from England (1870), a five-weeks-old young bride, and my

return thither (1908), an old woman. And for about seven-eighths of that

long time in Australia, while succeeding very well in making the best of

things, I was never without a subconscious sense of exile, a chronic

nostalgia, that could hardly bear the sight of a homeward-bound ship.

This often-tantalised but ever-unappeased desire to be back in my native

land wore the air of a secret sorrow gently shadowing an otherwise happy

life, while in point of fact it was a considerable source of happiness

in itself, as I now perceive. For where would be the interest and

inspiration of life without something to want that you cannot get, but

that it is open to you to try for? I tried hard to bridge the distance

to my goal for over thirty years, working, planning, failing, starting

again, building a thousand air-castles, more or less, and seeing them

burst like soap-bubbles as soon as they began to materialise; then I

gave up. The children had grown too old to be taken; moreover, they had

attained to wills of their own and did not wish to go. One had fallen to

the scythe of the indiscriminate Reaper, and that immense loss dwindled

all other losses to nothing at all. I cared no more where I lived, so

long as the rest were with me. In England my father and mother, who had

so longed for me, as I for them, were in their graves; no old home was

left to go back to. I was myself a grandmother, in spite of kindly and

even vehement assurances that I did not look it; more than that, I

_could_ have been a great-grandmother without violating the laws of

nature. At any rate, I felt that I was past the age for enterprises. It

was too late now, I concluded, and so what was the use of fussing any

more? In short, I sat down to content myself with the inevitable.

I was doing it. I had been doing it for several years. The time had come

when I could look out of window any Tuesday morning, watch a

homeward-bound mail-boat put her nose to sea, and turn from the

spectacle without a pang. The business of building air-castles

flourished, as of yore, but their bases now rested on Australian soil.

What was left of the future was all planned out, satisfactorily, even

delightfully, and England was not in it.

Then was the time for the unexpected to happen, and it did. A totally

undreamed-of family legacy, with legal business attached to it, called

my husband home. Even then it did not strike me that I was called too;

for quite a considerable time it did not strike him either. But there

befell a period of burning summer heat, the intensity and duration of

which broke all past records of our State and established it as a

historic event for future Government meteorologists; the weaklings of

the community succumbed to it outright or emerged from it physically

prostrate, and I, who had encountered it in a "run-down" condition, was

of the latter company. The question: "Was I fit to be left?" obtruded

itself into the settled policy: it logically resolved itself into the

further question: "Was I fit to go?" There was nothing whatever to

prevent my going if I could "stand" it, and a long sea-voyage had been

doctors' prescription for me for years. Mysteriously and, as it were,

automatically, I brisked up from the moment the second question was

propounded, and before I knew it found myself enrolled as a member of

the expedition. The two-berth cabin was engaged; travelling trunks, and

clothes to put in them, bestrewed my bedroom floor. I was going home--at

last!

And was it too late? Had I outlived my long, long hope? Not a bit of it.

I had outlived nothing, and it was exactly and ideally the right time.

"You will be disappointed," said more than one of my travelled old

friends, who had known the extravagance of my anticipations. "It will be

sad for you, finding all so strange and changed." "You will feel

dreadfully out of it, after so many years." "You will be very

lonely"--thus was I compassionately warned not to let a too sanguine

spirit run away with me. They were all wrong. I never had a

disappointment: nothing was sad for me, of all the change; no one could

have been less out of it, or less lonely. Every English day of the whole

six months was full of pleasure; I was not even bored for an hour. At no

time of my life could I have made the trip with a lighter heart (being

assured weekly that all was well behind me). Children would have meant

a burden, however precious a burden, and had I gone in my parents'

lifetime it would have been with them and me as our ship's captain said

it was with his wife during his brief sojourns with her; for half the

time she was overwrought with the joy of his return, and for the other

half miserable in anticipation of his departure, so that he never knew

her in her normal state. That my father and mother had long been dead,

and that the tragedies of home love and loss, with which I was so

familiar, were not pressing close about me, probably accounted more than

anything else for my being so well and happy. Also, it is not until a

woman is sixty, or thereabouts, that she is really free to enjoy

herself.

Well! I never was so well since I was born. The long sea-voyage did all

that was asked of it, and incidentally brought home to me the truth of

the old adage that silver lines all clouds. "If only we were not so far

away!" had been my inward wail for eight and thirty years. "If only we

had emigrated to Canada, or South Africa, or almost any part of the

British Empire but this! Then we might have flown home every few years

as easily as we now go from Melbourne to Sydney, and at no more

expense." I have the same regret, intensified, now that I am back in

Australia again. But there is no gain without its corresponding loss.

Not only might the joys of England after exile have become staled by

this time, but a voyage of a week or two would not have prepared me to

make the most of them. I am convinced that years of health and life are

given to those who, at the right juncture, can afford six weeks of

sea-travel at a stretch, and they may have been given to me and my

companion; I quite believe so. Each of us was a stone heavier at the end

of our holiday than at the beginning, and in the interval we forgot that

we were a day over twenty-five.

Consider for a moment the perfect adjustment of the conditions to the

needs of the invalid with no disease but exhaustion. I pass over the

special favours vouchsafed to me, in idyllic weather and tranquil seas,

and the mothering of a devoted stewardess who is my friend for life;

also in finding quiet and pleasant company in a saloon party of but

eighteen. That sort of luck cannot be purchased even with a first-class

steamer ticket, nor is it necessary to the efficacy of the treatment.

Take only the itinerary--that of the Suez route at a suitable season--as

it may be observed by anybody.

First, the run across the Indian Ocean--in the case of the mail-steamers

from Adelaide to Colombo, in our case from Adelaide to Aden. Three whole

weeks, without a break, without an incident, if all goes well. I had

never imagined the sea could be so blank as it presented itself to us on

this first section of our voyage. Ships may have passed in the night,

but I saw none by day; no land, no birds, no whales, no phosphorescent

wakes, no anything, except sea and sky and lovely sunsets. It may have

been monotonous, but it was monotony in the right place. It brought to

me, at the outset, that complete rest from all effort and excitement

which was the necessary preliminary to recovery and repair. I reposed on

my comfortable lounge from morn till eve, playing with a trifle of

needlework (too stupid with blissful torpor to read, while the

strangeness of quite idle hands would have induced the fidgets,

sea-drugged as I was). I ate, and slept, and basked, like a soulless

animal; forgot there were such things as posts and newspapers, as

dinner-planning and stocking-mending, as calls and committee-meetings;

forgot that I was the mother of a family, and had abandoned it for the

first time in history; forgot whether I was ill or well, or had nerves

or not; and thus soaked and steeped and soddened in peace, insensibly

renewed and established my strength, not patching it anyhow just to

carry on with, as one does on land, with a casual week at a

watering-place or in the mountains, but unhurriedly, uninterruptedly,

solidly, rebuilding it from the bottom up.

Then, when strength becomes aware that it is ready for use--at the

moment when one begins to feel that the monotony has lasted long

enough--then back comes the delightful world, with a new face of beauty

to match the new ardour of love for it that has been silently generating

within us. All the light of enterprising and romantic youth was in the

gaze I levelled through my binoculars (given to me for my voyage in

1870) at the first substantial token that I was in the gorgeous East,

one of the fairylands of imagination (comprising, roughly, all the

unknown earth) from the days of infancy when I learned to read. It was

an Arab dhow. I knew that pointed wing as well as I knew the shape of

chimney-pots, but the wonder that I was seeing it with my bodily eyes,

even as a speck upon the horizon, was overwhelming. I stared and stared,

but could not speak.

The rest was pure enchantment. As we drew near to the magnificent rock

of Aden--hateful place, I know, to its white inhabitants, and an old

tale not worth mentioning to the average Australian tourist--I said, in

my ecstasy: "This pays for the voyage, if we see nothing more." The

first white-awninged launch that bustled up to us, manned by two

nondescripts, one huge Nubian negro and one beautiful Somali boy, bore

through the brilliant air and water an official gentleman who probably

would have sold his soul for a London fog; it was not he, but another

official gentleman who swallowed nearly a bottle of ship's brandy while

attending to ship's business, and was presented with another bottle on

his departure by a sympathiser who understood his case. It was a hot

morning in the middle of May, and I had been accustomed from my youth to

atmospheric light and colour as glorious as the radiant setting of this

strange outpost of Empire in the East. Evidently it is in the eye

(backed by a strong imagination) of the gazer that poetic beauty lies.

After this, the unspeakable experiences followed thick and fast. Night

in the Straits, with Venus so bright that she cast a reflection like

moonlight across the water; the Red Sea in the morning--minarets on the

horizon, and those rocks of desolation, with the loneliest human

dwelling conceivable (the arcaded lighthouse) on the top of one of the

most impressively desolate; that other lighthouse at the gulf entrance,

with its flashing rays of red and white, its rock-base velvety purple

against a solemn sunset sky; Mount Sinai amongst the hills of Holy Land;

the majestic desert of so many dreams. Time was when I sniffed at the

colour of Holman Hunt's "Scapegoat" landscape, but here it was,

translated into living light, but no fainter in tint than the dead

paint had made it. Sapphires were not in it with that blue-green sea at

Suez, in which the jostling bumboats floated as in clearest glass. The

rocky shores to left were mauve, the right-hand desert and Holman-Hunty

hummocks salmon-pink, and no mortal painter was ever born, or ever will

be, to "get" the bloomy glow and fairy delicacy of Nature's textures and

technique. The Eastern sun blazed broadly over the scene, the

temperature at noon was ninety-nine degrees in the shade; the

composition was perfect.

Between tea-time and dinner we passed out of the city and close to its

domestic doorsteps--the closest I had yet come to Eastern life; and long

after we were in the canal it was a picture to look back upon from which

I could not tear my eyes. Low on the gleaming water--the two towns

linked by the dark thread of the railway embankment, brooded over by

that majestic mauve and violet hill--it was a vision of beauty indeed as

the light effects changed from moment to moment with the sinking of the

gorgeous sun. I could afford no time to dress that night. In my hat, as

I was, I snatched a mouthful of dinner, and was up again on deck, to

make the most of the short twilight; and so I saw the shadowy last of

Suez and more than I expected to see of the canal.

"Just a little ditch in the sand," somebody had told me, as one might

say, a primrose by the river's brim was nothing more. Apart from its

otherwise tremendous significance, that narrow watercourse was a highway

of romance to me. Egypt--Arabia--the very names set one's heart

thumping. It would be thrilling to be there even if one were blind. The

silence of the desert is more eloquent than any sound. But from the most

unsentimental point of view it was a ditch of varied aspects, that only

the dullest traveller could call uninteresting.

The Canal Company, it appeared, was widening it to double its original

measure across, top and bottom--something like a ten years' job, with

millions of money and priceless brain-matter in it--and we saw the

engineers at work. That is to say, they were not at work at the moment,

because the day's task was done; but there were their excavations and

machinery, fine and effective, and I can never look at such,

apprehending their meaning, without a lifting of the heart, a sense of

the beauty that is in the world unrecognised by that name. What, I

wondered, did my schoolgirl idol and apostle of beauty, Ruskin, think of

this ditch when it was a-making? Did he say? If, to my knowledge, he had

called it a desecration of Nature, I should instantly have agreed with

him. Now, to my life-educated eyes and soul, the very Holy Land was

sanctified by the faithful endeavour and achievement evidenced in

haulage-trucks and pipe-lines and those twin steel rails that he hated

so much, telling all their serious story to whoever could understand it.

It was indeed a beautiful as well as an instructive picture, that left

bank, as we moved beside it. The native labourers, after their work,

squatted in their little camps and dug-outs, and in the sand, or stood

statue-like to watch our passing, sharply silhouetted figures and groups

against the translucent sky, each a "study" that, if in a gallery, one

would go miles to see. Strings of camels were being led to water or were

wending homeward with their loads. Little encampments straight out of

the Bible, desert palm-trees, desert distances, all in the golden

afterglow, the clear-shining twilight, the evening peace that was too

peaceful for words, were gems for the collector of poetic impressions,

to be for ever cherished and preserved. And then how striking was the

rare glimpse of a Saxon face, the glance at us of grave eyes that one

knew had the all-governing brain behind them. The British Occupation in

Egypt--there it was, in the person of that lonely man in tent or

boat-house, advance agent of the Civilisation that spells Prosperity in

whatever part of the world it goes. One of these, out riding with a

lady, rode down to the water's edge to watch us pass. In their white

garb they were perfectly groomed, like their beautiful Arab horses,

which they sat in a style that was good to see; but they were pathetic

figures, with that lonely waste around them. I divined a deadly

homesickness in the eyes that followed our progress as long as we could

be seen, the same ache of the heart that afflicted me, for so many

years, whenever I saw a ship going to England without me. Yet one could

be quite sure that they never dreamed of slipping cables on their own

account as long as duty to the Empire held them where they were. Not the

man, at any rate.

And so it grew too dark to see anything beyond the edge of our

searchlight, which showed only post-heads in the water, and I went to

bed.

I was asleep when we passed Ismailia, contrary to my intentions, but I

got up at four o'clock, to lose no more. Still unbroken desert to the

right; to the left a well-made embankment with a roadway atop, and

behind that a belt of bamboos and greenery, telegraph lines and a

railway, broken at intervals by the oases of the _gares_. An American

navy-boat made way for us at one of these, a pair of submarines

conspicuous on her deck. At a little before five the sun of a lovely

morning rose on our starboard side, and one saw the desert wet and dark,

yielding its immemorial savagery to the civilising hand and brain. One

of the fine up-to-date dredges, amongst the many dredges, was pumping

the mud up on the land as it sucked it from the canal bottom. In the

shining sun-flushed pools of its creation black forms of storks moved

statelily, apparently finding nourishment already where there had been

none before. On the left bank there was the embodied spirit of progress

again, doubtless looking at his work and on the way to expedite it;

white-clothed, white-helmeted, enthroned on a railway trolly, which a

bare-legged native ran along the line as it were a perambulator on ball

bearings, two more natives sitting upon it, ready to take turns with him

at the job. Lifting the eye slightly, one saw open water along the sky

behind them, a flashing, glittering strip, studded with forty-two lateen

sails that might have been carved of mother o' pearl; and almost

immediately, straight ahead, a low mass of something as yet misty and

formless in the dazzling rose and gold of the morning, reminiscent of

Suez in its sunset transfiguration--Port Said, less than an hour from

us.

It was Sunday, and divine service in the reading-room had been arranged.

Soon after six, at about the time of passing the Gare de Naz-el-ech,

passengers began to come up, a few with prayer-book in hand. But divine

service was "off," by order of the captain--a religious man, very

regular in his attendance at public worship. He knew how it would be at

seven-thirty, when we were going to drop anchor in the port at seven,

and that was exactly how it was--every inch of ship overrun with ardent

pedlars, while coaling from the great lighters, three or four lashed

abreast, was in full swing. I may as well say at once that for me, as

for nearly all the passengers (my own companion, who declared himself

quite happy in his choice, being the only member of the saloon party to

stay at home), that Sunday, as a Sunday, has to be wiped off the slate

entirely, posted as missing amongst the Sabbath days of life. I must

confess further that it was the most delightful (so called) Sunday I

ever spent. At last I did more than see the Gorgeous East of lifelong

dreams; I felt it, I had speech with it. In a select party, headed by

the dear woman who, apart from her solid social position, was the chief

pillar of the church on board, I was permitted to go ashore. I had the

free use of six hours to do what I liked in.

In the half-hour before breakfast I did exciting business with the

bumboatmen. I bought a piece of tapestry, representing camels,

palm-trees, mosques and the like, which the native vendor assured me was

handmade in Egyptian prisons, though in my heart of hearts I knew

better; also brooches and bracelets which seemed dirt cheap at two and

three shillings apiece, the exact counterparts of which I afterwards

bought at William Whiteley's for sixpence ha'penny. As soon after

breakfast as we could get our letters ready, I was rowed through the

jewel-bright water into the world of fairy tales. Oh, I know what Port

Said is to those familiar with it, and I could have seen for myself, had

I wished to see, that the Gorgeous East could be flimsy and tawdry,

even ugly, here and there; but it _was_ the East, and that was enough;

the glamour of the rosy spectacles beautified all. Nothing was easier

than to forget and ignore what would doubtless be impossible to overlook

on a second visit, and impossible to put up with on a third or fourth.

Having arrived at the centre of things, we appointed an hour for

luncheon at the Hotel Continental, and split our party into twos and

threes. An unattached man took charge of me and another unattached lady,

and escorted us about the town and to the shops which alone attracted

her (for she knew Port Said already). Wonderful shops, too, some of them

were, and it was no wasted time I spent roaming about them, while she

gave her attention to spangled scarves and lace; but the lattice-veiled

windows of the mysterious dwelling-rooms above them, and the flowing and

glowing life of the narrow streets, were what I had come to see. It was

delightful to return to the pavement under the Continental, and there

sit, with a cold and bubbling lemon drink, in one of the low chairs

which so hospitably invite the wayfarer, to watch the stream of mingling

East and West go by, and its eddies around one--the veiled native lady

touching skirts with the breezy English girl; the turbaned sherbet

seller, his remarkable brazen ewer under his arm, dodging the swift

bicycle; the oily-eyed and sodden rapscallion of the Levant, or the

bejewelled and bepowdered person no better than she should be, elbowing

the spare young cleric slipping through these dangerous places on his

way to the Pan-Anglican Congress. And the stranger contrasts on the

wide, tiled side-walk, a continuous outdoor café rather than a

promenade--Frenchmen playing dominoes, swarthy traders doing secret

business over their drinks; passengers from the various ships in port,

mothers and aunts with children by the hand; here and there the habitual

tourist, easily identified; here and there the impeccably clothed,

clean-limbed white figure, whose high bearing and bluff dignity

proclaimed the important person--soldier of distinction,

big-game-hunting lord of leisure, powerful Government official, as the

case might be. All up and down, around the low tables, faces of all

nations, speech of all languages, and, as an undercurrent, the

incessantly made gentle appeal for notice from the dark-skinned pedlars

sinuously navigating the narrow channels between the chairs, with their

cheap jewellery and picture post-cards and puzzle walking-sticks, trying

how far they could go under the eye of the Egyptian policeman, standing

ready to order them over the curb at the first sign of unwelcome

pertinacity.

For a good half-hour we sat at ease, in the middle of this picture, and

I enjoyed myself surpassingly. Then a little more shopping on behalf of

my still unsatisfied lady companion, and then the gathering of the whole

seven of our landing party at the appointed rendezvous for luncheon. We

were ready for the meal, and it was not the least memorable of the

æsthetic pleasures of that "Sunday out." I am told it was simply as a

meal ashore, after many meals at sea, that I found it so delectable, but

in justice to the courteous French proprietor, as he seemed to be, who

himself took charge of our table, and for my own credit as a

connoisseur, I deny that assertion, made only by those who were not

there. I declare, on my honour, that, apart from the good cookery, the

bread, butter and beer of the Hotel Continental at Port Said--such a

seemingly unlikely place in which to find them so--were the best I ever

tasted. Particularly the bread. One of the remaining ambitions of my

life is to find out whether that bread was French, or Egyptian, or

Turkish, or what (the reader bears in mind that this is the story of an

innocent abroad), and to get some more of it, if possible.

We sat outside the house again, to repose after our repast, and I should

think there was no more contented person in the world than I was then. I

bought a little more Brummagem rubbish that palmed itself off as of

Oriental manufacture, of the softly persistent pedlars circulating about

my chair; and our escort settled the hotel bill, which worked out at

four-and-sixpence for each of us. Never did I grudge hard-earned money

for sensual indulgence less. I would not now take pounds for my

recollections of that meal, because the day could not have been perfect

without it.

So it drew on for four o'clock, when leave expired. Tired, hot and

happy, we wandered back to the quay, dropped our threepenny pieces into

official hands before the tantalised boatmen, stepped into our cushioned

barge and were rowed to the ship. There we found coaling done, afternoon

tea prepared for us, everything ready for the start. And, again in the

decline of the brilliant day, we saw the whole place bathed in

celestially rosy light, a last impression of the gorgeous East as one

loves to imagine it, to be hung on the line of the picture gallery of

memory alongside Aden and Suez. Because decks were being washed down,

the captain allowed a few of us to survey the scene from his bridge, and

while we rested weary bones we gazed from that commanding altitude upon

the unforgettable panorama--the houses of the sea-front, the casino, the

famous lighthouse, the bathing-beach with its white surf and its

machines, the long breakwater walling the exit from the canal,

and--farewelling us, as it seemed--the impressive statue of Ferdinand de

Lesseps, pointing back to his great work. At sunset we fetched up the

coats so long unworn, and in the fresh air of the Mediterranean watched

the flushing and fading of the distant city, low on the water like

another Venice, until the evening bugle called us down. Too tired to

dress, we ate our dinner perfunctorily, took a last look at the

spacious, cool-breathing night, saw the Damietta light twinkling, and

went to bed early. No one so much as mentioned church.

Then came three quiet days, sunny and cool, in which the right thing to

do was to lie on one's long chair and recover from excitements.

Meditation was so sweet, and I was so grateful to Port Said, that I

could not grumble at losing Malta, where the ship had no engagements. A

far-off, faint reflection of what was supposed to be a flashlight in

Valetta harbour consoled me on my way to bed one night with its

suggestion that Templars really lived, and that the old cathedral and

the old steep streets were still there, awaiting the future pilgrim. No

more did I set foot in "foreign parts," but what I further saw of them

sufficed to make each remaining day of the voyage memorable. "The Bay of

Tunis," says the captain, and: "Old Carthage lies behind that hill."

We were so close to the African shore that we could see the occasional

town, the lonely farm, the lonelier fort or monastery, very distinctly;

and the little unfenced, unshaped patches of tillage scratched out of

the wilderness, and the little roadways meandering through the gaps of

the crowding rock-ranges, otherwise so savagely desolate; and the

evening lights sparsely scattered along the shore, and the early morning

camp-fires on the seaward declivities, so high up and isolated as to

suggest the fastnesses of the pirates of bygone days. A horn of the Bay

of Algiers stole out of twilight mist, and lit up its clustering lamps

as we looked at it; and the following day revealed the face of Spain,

frowning at her _vis-à-vis_, but splendid in a stormy sunset, a velvety

violet mass against a flaming sky.

At four o'clock again on Sunday morning I was up and dressed, summoned

by the captain stamping overhead. And out of the dawn came majestic

Gibraltar--the sun was up before five--and Algeciras of recent fame,

ships and warships, hills, houses, hamlets, windmills, roads and Tarifa

Point transfixing a wrecked steamer, sad detail of a picture full of

life and charm. Another red-letter Sunday, but not quite so red as the

last. Divine service was duly celebrated in the saloon after dinner--our

last on board.

The captain stamped again at five A.M. on Monday, and I saw the Castle

of Cintra on its rocky headland, and more of the interesting life of the

country as we slid along its shores. I cut breakfast short to feast on

the historic landscape (in youth I had devoured the literature of the

Cid, the Peninsular War, and Don Quixote, in a score of weighty tomes),

to study the contours of Spanish houses, to count the number of visible

Spanish windmills, all twirling their sails for business, in the good

old Mediæval style. Until the sailors at their work of holystoning and

sluicing drove us from the last inch of deck, and rain--almost the only

rain we had on that blessed voyage--drew a grey curtain over the scene.

The Bay of Biscay was an angel. Summer-blue sea and sky, blushing

gloriously when sunset interfused them, a young horned moon, with its

attendant star, hanging over the saffron afterglow and making night

heavenly; hardly a breaking wave. And the East was all behind us, and

Malta and Spain, even Australia, which still held the kernel of one's

heart; their memories were put away like precious pictures in their

packing-cases, until presently one would have time to hang them in the

light again. Nothing could be thought of now but that which we were to

see to-morrow--England, the Mecca of our pilgrimage--after thirty-eight

years.

It was Thursday, the 4th of June, at nine in the morning, when it

happened. Of all the lovely mornings we had at sea that was the

loveliest. A little hazy on the sky-line, but sunny, breezy, bracing,

absolutely perfect. I ran upstairs after breakfast, to find a group of

men focussing their glasses upon a distant spot. One of them turned and

pointed to it. "There she is," said he. "That's Beachy Head."

There she was indeed, a white speck shining out of the melting fog. I

pressed my own good glasses to my eyes, but just at first, although she

was so plain to see, I was too blind to see her.