"That'll do, my boy, thank you," said Kit, slipping down at the edge of the tide. "I'd give you a penny, only I've not got one. No, you can't come any further. It's too dangerous. This is a job for officers." He began to paddle out, the ripples playing about his ankles. Blob's presence braced him to his task. It called to his spirit of a gentleman. He would just show this lout what blood meant. Blob followed him with awed eyes. "She's aloive," he warned his brother-boy. "She'll swallow ee." "No, she won't," Kit replied. "She's an old friend of mine." IV The boy could swim at an age when to most lads walking is still an accomplishment. Now he waded quietly down a sandy reach between black rocks. The water was warmer than the air. When it clasped his waist, he trusted himself to it faithfully. The sea was his mother, and the mother of his race. Her arms were about him; her spirit entered into his. How pure she was, how strong, how good! He kissed her cool brow and dropped his head upon her bosom. Turning on his back, he saw the wall of the Downs, black beneath glorious stars. On the top of the wall poised the moon, peeping over the brim of the world at him. He waved to her, laughing: she too was a friend. And the moon, wise as innocent, smiled back. He swam leisurely, without splash, almost without ripple, quiet as the tide. He had the world to himself, and loved the loneliness. Out here, the sea about him, the night above, he could feel the slow tides of God pushing onwards through the dark of Time. Wars and tumults and all the tiny irritations and griefs of life, what were they to that immense-moving flood? And he was one with that flood. Stealing through the water with cleaving arms, he was assured of it. V Something rose shadowy and gaunt before him. It was the privateer. The sight tumbled him out of Eternity into Time. His heart began to clamour, as though it would force its way out of his body. No longer one with God, seeing all things with His large eyes, and loving them--he was a little boy, mortally afraid, alone in the vast and callous night. In his flurry be began to splash about: then recollected himself, and trod water quietly. The moon was deserting him, the sardonic moon he had thought of as a friend. Her silver rim glimmered behind the Downs and was gone. He missed her. Cold she was, still she had been company. He thought she might have stayed--just this one night! He felt aggrieved, and very much alone. And those stars strewing the night above him were so far, and had such hard little eyes. The water grew dull and dark about him, and of a sudden greatly colder. The flag hung like a clammy halter about his neck. Verdun was not far, and death very near. But for the cold he would have cried. He wished he'd never come. It flashed in upon him to hail the ship, and ask them for a cup of coffee. The thought amused him and saved the situation. He began to chuckle.