6 inches by 9 feet. Under such circumstances I gratefully accepted the offer of the carpenter's mate, an old shipmate, and therefore much more inclined to go out of his way to show me a kindness than if he had been merely a "shipmate," to stow it in the carpenter's storeroom, where it was put up neatly overhead between the beams, and cunningly whitewashed to resemble them in colour (on the same principle as a fish's adapting its tints to those of the bed of the stream), and then I flattered myself that all was well. Not so, however, for not long afterwards, when the captain was going his weekly rounds something in the aforesaid storeroom caught his eagle eye.

"What box is that?"

"If you please, sir, it b'longs to Lef-tenant Tower." "Out with it! and tell Mr. Tower it is my direction that he has no private goods in the ship's storerooms."

So my persecuted model came back on my hands like a bad shilling, and I was obliged to dispose of it to the chaplain at his own terms.

But I had yet another box, a parting cumshaw from our comprador at Whampoa, about which I felt at ease, because the gunner had obligingly secreted it for me in the nethermost recesses of the after-magazine, where surely, I thought, it must escape detection. It did, but not self-conviction; because on arrival at Portsmouth it was found that the box had been placed upside down, so that every drop of what I called "syrup," but the gunner "gravy," had drained away a year ago out of the six cases of choice preserved ginger and cumquats which it contained. If I had

met Geoff on shore that evening I should have told him the story, much, I'm sure, to his amusement.

Our Hyder Indians not yet having made their appearance, we became anxious (we had left their women to be picked up at Nanaimo), because we had been specially entrusted with the duty of seeing them safely to the north of Cape Mudge, at the entrance to the Narrows, and I was sent away in the pinnace with two days' provisions to look after them.

We encamped for the night on the beach at the entrance to the Narrows, about ten miles from the ship. Between the beach and the forest lay a rising grassy belt, and along high-water mark for miles was stretched a line of bleached driftwood. The first thing was to build a jetty of logs and stones, and then, having lit a stupendous fire, to gather round it and sup, after which we yarned and smoked and enjoyed the heat of such a blaze as I never saw before or since, the sparks flying upwards in a million corruscations, affording a beautiful display of natural fireworks.

The falling tide left the boat rather unexpectedly high and dry, so I walked into her with four men, leaving the others to sleep by the fire, but by 2 A.M. the water rose so rapidly that our jetty was washed away before we realised the situation, and the men had to wade in over the roughest stones through the coldest water.

The currents are very rapid, and the rise and fall very deep, sudden, and treacherous on the Vancouver coast, as Lieutenants David Boyle, Hamilton Dunlop, and Tommy Gooch of the Satellite found to their cost when they took our pinnace for a pleasure trip from

Esquimalt to Stoke Inlet. Not being able to reach their destination on the same evening, they took Tommy Gooch's advice, who professed to know the coast, made the boat fast between two big rocks in a snug little creek, and stretched themselves out on the thwarts for a good sleep. The awakening was rude, inasmuch as it arose from every one's being rolled off the thwarts into the bottom of the boat, which the tide had left high and dry in the queer position depicted in the illustration.

When they got to Stoke, they found a family called Muir, who, to Boyle's surprise and delight had recently come from the village of Dreghorn in Ayrshire, within two miles of his own home.

To return to my own boat. We weighed at daylight and cruised about under sail, and soon the expected canoes began to glide by. During the day local natives appeared, with whom we trafficked, tobacco being the favourite currency, a pipeful being enough to buy a large fish, but an old coat was taken in exchange for a deer of 150 lbs. These natives were all armed with antiquated flint muskets. When we reached the ship in the evening, we found all our Hyders present, but on their way having had a fight with Captain George's party, which must have been sharp, as there was loss of life on both sides.

Next day we left them to their own devices, and returned to Esquimalt. Shortly after that, complaints came that other Indians had been destroying John Cole's property at Saanich, and it being considered necessary to capture the leader, we were ordered to take the Sheriff for the purpose, though it seemed slightly ridiculous to send a frigate for so small