"I've been before this twice fairly foundered, and once hard and fast ashore in one day. I was on a visit to Bob S----'s brother at Magdalen, and among the amusements of the season was boating: most unseasonable work it was just then, for the weather was bitter cold. We started, a lot of us, intending to navigate the river as far as Ely. None of us happened to know any thing about nauticals, so we blindly submitted ourselves to the guidance of a fresh-man who wore a remarkably hard-a-weather pilot-coat, and waddled in walking like a man unused to terra firma. He took the command as naturally as possible; never dreaming of so far doubting our judgments as to mistrust his own ability. We had hardly got well away, when a squall laid us right over, and fairly swamped the boat. This we regarded as an accident that might overtake the most skilful; and I verily believe that we even the more highly esteemed our Palinurus on account of the coolness which, we must all do him the justice to say, he exhibited. But when, soon after, he ran us regularly under water, we began to be suspicious, and hints flew about that he had undertaken more than he was up to. On this Mr Tarpaulin, with all imaginable complacency, asked us what the row was about, and whether we thought that any of us would have done better, if this had been the first time in our lives that we had exercised naval command. After this confession, we were no more surprised at accidents. We regarded it as rather an easy let off that the concern was driven hopelessly hard ashore, in a stiff clayey soil, that allowed no idea of getting her off that night. All this may sound very little to a regular old salt, like yourself; but add to this little sketch the idea of a driving sleet, and a seven or eight miles' walk to Ely at midnight, without shoes, which the greedy loam sucked from off our feet, and the _ensemble_ of hardship is enough to satisfy a landsman like myself. Since that time I have been little given to boating, and, as you know, never go out except with you." "Well I'll try never to play you such a trick as did your tarpaulin friend. But the sea is a ticklish element, and the sky is a treacherous monitor." "They never, either of them, promised better than they do to-day, so let us be off, or Virginie will start in search of pleasure with a cloud on her pretty face." We bundled up our traps and started accordingly. The distance between my quarter and the little mole where the Wave lay rocking in the gentle undulations was soon passed over. I felt the influence of feelings far more serious than I wished to have perceived, and Hamilton evidently respected them. Like a good fellow, he pulled away at his cigar and said nothing. His little animal, under the guardianship of one of the ragged _gamins_, had preceded us to the waterside, and was there waiting our arrival, in order to the due discharge of its burden.