The afternoon was fast passing and we were getting impatient to be off when, luckily, at about four o’clock the violence of the gale diminished somewhat, and we at once prepared to start. A ludicrous expression of relief came over the old man’s face when we asked for our passports and told him we were going away. He became cheerful and amiable, and confided in us, as we bade him good-bye, that he was a Pole, and had been in the service of the Government for over forty years, and was very much afraid he would have lost his place if he had permitted us to pass the night in the village. We had a paddle of ten miles before us, and about two hours of daylight to do it in, and we set off in good spirits, looking forward with agreeable anticipations to our camp on the sea-shore. Soon after leaving Vilkoff we entered a maze of channels among low islands, where our horizon was limited by the rank of tall reeds along the shores. We met several lotkas with fishermen paddling up to the village from their summer huts near the sea-coast, and a large patrol-boat full of Roumanian soldiers near a large picket station, and, judging from these indications that we were in the right passage, we paddled steadily on. In an hour and a half the stream curved round to the south east, and we were enabled to take advantage of the wind and hoisted sail at once. Just as the sun was setting we came into a short reach, scarcely wider than the Danube at Donaueschingen, and there, in front of us, was the straight line of the sea-horizon stretching across between two low, reed-covered points. In a few moments more we sailed out gayly into the Black Sea. The broad open expanse of the sea was before us, all yellow and glowing with the reflection of the gorgeous sunset sky, and the light on the jetty at Sulina glimmered brightly in the distance. But we could see neither beach nor sand-dunes, and for a long distance in front of us and on either side, as far as we could distinguish in the dim light, stumps of trees, ugly snags, and bunches of reeds were sticking up out of the water. No possible camp-ground was visible anywhere, and for a moment we scarcely knew what to do or which way to turn [Illustration: THE LAST TOILET IN CAMP]