Demaine had often been told of the long and complicated messages which little pieces of bunting could convey, and he had himself presented to a country school a whole series of flags which, in a certain order, signified that England expected every man to do his duty. But he could not conceive how so complete a message as the presence and desired arrest of an unfortunate stowaway could be conveyed to the authorities ashore by any such simple means, unless indeed the presence of stowaways was so common an occurrence that a code signal was used for the purpose of disembarking that cargo. The boy illumined him. “They got th’ flag up,” he said, “syin’ ‘Send a baht,’ and when they sees it they’ll run up one theirselves--then’s yer toime.” But the boy’s information, as is common with the official statements of inferiors, was grossly erroneous. A voice came bawling down from above, ordering him to tumble up with the prisoner. Tumble up George did; that is, he crawled up the steep and noisome ladder, and as he put his head out into the glorious air, thought that never was such contrast between heaven and hell. He drank the air and put his shoulders back to it, to the risk of the green-black coat. George Mulross was one of those few men who have never written verse, but he was capable that moment if not of the execution at least of the sentiment which the more classical of my readers are weary of in Prom. Vinc. Chor. A. 1-19, Oh the god-like air! The depth and the expanse of sky! The fatherly sky was all light, the sun was climbing, and a vivid belt of England lay, still asleep, green and in repose under that beneficence; and in the midst of it, set all round with fields, lay a lovely little town. It was Parham. Demaine had once or twice noted how strangely glad the houses of men seem from off the sea, but as he was familiar rather with Calais and Dover, with Ostend, Folkestone and Boulogne than with other ports, and as he had more often approached them in winter weather than in the London season, there was something miraculously new to him in this vision which had been the delight of his forefathers: England from the summer sea. The clear spirit bubbling within him encountered another and muddier but forceful current as his eyes fell upon the first officer. That individual surveyed him with hatred but did not deign to throw him a word. He bade the lad stand by George in a particular place upon the deck till he should be sent for; he next threatened several of the boy’s vital organs if his prisoner were not properly kept in view, and having pronounced these threats, lurched away. “Th’ old man’ll want yer soon, ter fill in is sheet,” said the lad by way of making conversation. “Myebe ee’ll ave ye larrupped, myebe ee wahn’t. Ee didn’t the larst un,” he put in as an afterthought, as though it were the custom to larrup some seven stowaways out of eight by way of parting, and to make capricious exception of certain favourites.