This Mortal Coil | Page 6

not disappointing her foregone expectations, however ill-founded, and be the same more or less. You observe, I speak with the charming precision of the English statute-book."
"But how do you mean to get to Whitestrand ?" Relf asked suddenly, after a short pause. "It's a difficult place to reach, you know. There's no station nearer than ten miles off, and that a country one, so that when you arrive there, you can get no conveyance to take you over."
"So my cousin gave me to understand. She was kind enough to provide me with minute instructions for her bookless wilds. I believe I'm to hire a costermonger's cart or something of the sort to convey my portmanteau; and I'm to get across myself by the aid of the natural means of locomotion with which a generous providence or survival of the fittest has been good enough to endow me by hereditary transmission. At least, so my cousin Elsie instructs me."
"WhY not come round with me in the tub?" Relf suggested good-humoredly.
"What? your yacht? Hatherley was telling me you were the proud possessor of a ship. Are you going round that way any time shortly ?"
"Well, she's not exactly what you call a yacht," Relf replied, with an apologetic tinge in his tone of voice. "She's only a tub, you know, an open boat almost, with a covered well and just room for three to sleep and feed in. 'A poor thing, but my own,' as Touchstone says; as broad as she's long, and as shallow as she's broad, and quite flat-bottomed, drawing so little water at a pinch that you can sail her across an open meadow when there's a heavy dew on. And if you come, you'll have to work your passage, of course. I navigate her myself, as captain, crew, cabin-boy, and passenger, with one other painter fellow to share watches with me. The fact is, I got her built as a substitute for rooms, because I found it cheaper than taking lodgings at a seaside place and hiring a rowboat whenever one wanted one. I cruise about the English coast with her in summer; and in the cold months, I run her round to the Mediterranean. And, besides, one can get into such lovely little side-creeks and neglected channels, all full of curious objects of interest, which nobody can ever see in anything else. She's a perfect treasure to a marine painter in the mud-and-buoy business. But I won't for a moment pretend to say she's comfortable for a landsman. If you come with me, in fact, you'll have to rough it."
"I love roughing it. How long 1 will it take us to cruise round to Whitestrand?"
"Oh, the voyage depends entirely upon the wind and tide. Sailing-boats take their own time. The 'Mud- Turtle' that's what I call her doesn't hurry. She's lying now off the Pool at the Tower, taking care of herself in the absence of all her regular crew; and Potts, my mate, he's away in the north, intending to meet me next week at Lowestoft, where my mother and sister are stopping in lodgings. We can start on our cruise whenever you like say, if you choose, to-morrow morning."
'Thanks, awfully," Hugh answered, with a nod of assent "To tell you the truth, I should like nothing better. It'll be an experience, and the wise man lives upon new experiences. Pallas, you remember, in Tennyson's 'Oenone,' recommended to Paris the deliberate cultivation of experiences as such. I'll certainly go. For my own part, like Saint Simon, I mean in my time to have tried everything. Though Saint Simon, to be sure, went rather far, for I believe he even took a turn for a while at picking pockets."
CHAPTER II.
DOWN STREAM.
Tide served next morning at eleven; and punctual to the minute for, besides being a poet, he prided himself on his qualities as a man of business Hugh Massinger surrendered himself in due course by previous appointment on board the "Mud-Turtle" at the Pool by the Tower But his eyes were heavier and redder than they had seemed last night; and his wearied manner showed at once, by a hundred little signs, that he had devoted but small time since Relf left him to what Mr. Herbert Spencer periphrastically describes as "reparative processes."
The painter, attired for the sea like a common sailor in jersey and trousers and knitted woolen cap, rose up from the deck to greet him hospitably. His whole appearance betokened serious business. It was evident that Warren Relf did not mean to play at yachting.
"You've been making a night of it, I'm afraid, Massinger," he said, as their eyes met. "Bad preparation, you know, for a day down the river. We shall have a loppy sea, if this wind holds, when we pass the