The best noise in all the world is the rattle of the anchor chain when one comes into harbour at last, and lets it go over the bows.

You may say that one does nothing of the sort, that one picks up moorings, and that letting go so heavy a thing as an anchor is no business for you and me. If you say that you are wrong. Men go from inhabited place to inhabited place, and for pleasure from station to station, then pick up moorings as best they can, usually craning over the side and grabbing as they pass, and cursing the man astern for leaving such way on her and for passing so wide. Yes, I know that. You are not the only man who has picked up moorings. Not by many many thousands. Many moorings have I picked up in many places, none without some[Pg 345] sort of misfortune; therefore do I still prefer the rattle of the anchor chain.

Once—to be accurate, seventeen years ago—I had been out all night by myself in a boat called the Silver Star. She was a very small boat. She had only one sail; she was black inside and out, and I think about one hundred years old. I had hired her of a poor man, and she was his only possession.

It was a rough night in the late summer when the rich are compelled in their detestable grind to go to the Solent. When I say it was night I mean it was the early morning, just late enough for the rich to be asleep aboard their boats, and the dawn was silent upon the sea. There was a strong tide running up the Medina. I was tired to death. I had passed the Royal Yacht Squadron grounds, and the first thing I saw was a very fine and noble buoy—new-painted, gay, lordly—moorings worthy of a man!

I let go the halyard very briskly, and I nipped forward and got my hand upon that[Pg 346] great buoy—there was no hauling of it in-board; I took the little painter of my boat and made it fast to this noble buoy, and then immediately I fell asleep. In this sleep of mine I heard, as in a pleasant dream, the exact motion of many oars rowed by strong men, and very soon afterwards I heard a voice with a Colonial accent swearing in an abominable manner, and I woke up and looked—and there was a man of prodigious wealth, all dressed in white, and with an extremely new cap on his head. His whiskers also were white and his face bright red, and he was in a great passion. He was evidently the owner or master of the buoy, and on either side of the fine boat in which he rowed were the rowers, his slaves. He could not conceive why I had tied the Silver Star to his magnificent great imperial moorings, to which he had decided to tie his own expensive ship, on which, no doubt, a dozen as rich as himself were sailing the seas.

I told him that I was sorry I had picked up his moorings, but that, in this country, it was[Pg 347] the common courtesy of the sea to pick up any spare moorings one could find. I also asked him the name of his expensive ship, but he only answered with curses. I told him the name of my ship was the Silver Star.

Then, when I had cast off, I put out the sweeps and I rowed gently, for it was now slack water at the top of the tide, and I stood by while he tied his magnificent yacht to the moorings. When he had done that I rowed under the stern of that ship and read her name. But I will not print it here, only let me tell you it was the name of a ship belonging to a fabulously rich man. Riches, I thought then and I think still, corrupt the heart.

Upon another occasion I came with one companion across the bar of Orford River, out of a very heavy wind outside and a very heavy sea. I just touched as I crossed that bar, though I was on the top of the highest tide of the year, for it was just this time in September, the highest springs of the hunter's moon.

M............