But, after all, the best boats were the boats we built entirely ourselves. Our favourite materials were corks, empty match-boxes, and such wood as lies within the scope of a pocket-knife, and we would drive tintacks into the craft until it looked like a nursery cake, crowned with burnt currants. The resulting ships varied as to shape and size, but could be trusted to conduct themselves in the water with a charming eccentricity. Sometimes they seemed to skim the waves like birds, sometimes the water leaped through them with a laugh, and they sank down to join the minnows and the pebbles at the bottom of the stream. In the latter case the owner would lie flat on the bank with a sharp stone pressing into his chest, and feel for the lost craft in the cold, slippery waters; for the rest of the morning his shirt-sleeve would cling damply to his skin, while the assembled experts considered the failure and made acute suggestions. The stream—we called it a river—on which we sailed these ships passed in its cheerful course through an iron pipe, and sometimes a vessel that had disappeared merrily under the dark arch would be seen no more of our eyes, though we waited at the other end of the passage perilous until our bodies grew chill in our sailor suits, and the mists came rolling up from the water-meadows. It was easy to crouch down by the mouth of the pipe, and hear the water lap-lapping in the dark against the echoing sides of the tunnel, but our ears could tell us nothing, and as we went home we would speculate in whispers as to the fate of the missing vessel. Had it foundered on some treacherous rock, or was there some mysterious outlet unknown to man, through which it had escaped us? Even while we spoke it might be nodding on merrily towards the night and the stars, through a new, strange country that no one could find in daylight fashion. In truth, there was no game like this, appealing alike to mind and body, and fraught with surprises and enchanting side-issues of play. We might launch our vessel at dawn for Babylon, and night would find it dreaming by some South Sea isle, or lying a shattered wreck on the coast of Brazil. Doubtless to the grown-up observer, who had seen the great sea dotted with little ships, our gutter mishaps and adventures on puddles were of small importance. But as becomes the children of an island race, we played this game with a strange earnestness, and though our boats were small, we knew that they were large enough for little boys to go roaming in through the long day. And that was all that mattered. A REPERTORY THEATRE