It was nearly six when the train drew up at Bursledon, one of the most delightfully situated stations it is possible to imagine. It is perched on the side of a steep hill, with the placid waters of the Hamble River washing the foot of the well-wooded declivity. Notwithstanding the gentle summer's breeze that was swaying the treetops, not a ripple disturbed the surface of the stream, except when an occasional dinghy put off to one or other of the numerous small yachts that swung easily at their moorings. "You ought to have alighted at Netley," remarked the station-master, in reply to an inquiry as to the best means of reaching Hamble village. "But you may possibly get a conveyance, or a boatman down there will row you down-stream." "Excuse me, sir," exclaimed a tall, bronzed, and bearded individual, rigged out in a tanned jersey, white boating hat, and flannel trousers tucked into a pair of sea-boots, the whole costume liberally bespattered with river mud. "I overheard you say that you wanted to get down to Hamble. My motor-launch is going there in half an hour's time, should you care to take a passage in her." The pater assented. "It will give us time to get tea," he added. "Where shall we pick up your boat?" "On the quay by that cottage you can see down there," he replied, pointing to a prettily situated, creeper-covered house close to the water's edge. "We start at seven." And, touching his hat, the mud-stained individual strolled away with the peculiar slouching gait affected by most seafaring men. "What ought we to give him for the passage down?" asked my father of the station-master, after the motor-boat person had taken his departure. The official smiled in a very amused fashion. "I don't think I would offer him anything, if I were you," he replied. "He is the Hon. George Pycrust, owner of the steam-yacht 'Chimborazo,' member of the Motor-Yacht Club, and I don't know what else besides. There's no room for snobs on this river, and yachtmen do each other a good turn whenever they have a chance." We were directed to a little inn on the hill above the railway-station, and here in a few minutes we were enjoying a substantial tea, including a determined attack upon a freshly boiled Warsash crab, a delicacy for which the district is famous, although the flavour is distinctly different from that of the shell-fish caught on our part of the coast. Punctually at seven o'clock we arrived at the private quay where the Hon. George's motor-launch was waiting, and with the faintest tremor her powerful engine was started and we sped rapidly down the river, my father keeping up an animated conversation with the mud-stained scion of a noble house on the ever-ready subject of yachting. Quickly the lead-coloured hulks of the obsolete gunboats were left astern, and the three-masted training ship "Mercury" passed, and we came in sight of the red-tiled roofs of Hamble village, fringed with a forest of yachts' masts and backed by a dense mass of trees.