jib were set, for we had come in, the winners of a race, and were sailing home to the westward under racing canvas. The waterman who steered the yacht in the match was sailing her then, and we were in the cabin discussing some lunch when the story was told. Harrison says, that exciting as the race was, it was not half so exciting as the slow and dangerous beat up Breydon the night he rescued " Breydon Jack." XVII. WINTER-TIME ON THE MERES THE Meres of Salop, so pleasant to the eye in the bright summer, are even more attractive, to my thinking, in the depth of winter. Black water beneath, grey sky above, bare trees, gaunt and grim, with equally grim shadows on the water; dull green of sodden grass, with brown stains of decayed vegetable matter soiling it here and there; over all a chill wind sweeping-such are the meres at a first glance in the winter. Not by any means an attractive picture, one would think; but a little careful use of the eyes will make it most interesting. At such times the book of nature is freely opened to the observer. No longer hidden by the summer foliage, bird life especially is more distinctly revealed to us. Pushing along in a punt by the wooded margin, many a discovery of some rare bird is made; many an action of dumb life, that leaves Ꮮ us in some doubt as to whether instinct has not a wider meaning than we are generally disposed to give it, is observed; and many a lesson to oneself is learnt in a few short hours. Still more beautiful are the meres when a keen, hard frost has been for days binding the land in its iron chains; when the upland and plain are hidden in a soft white carpet of snow; when the wildfowl nestle among the rotten reeds and long dead herbage by the side of the mere, and send forth their strange cries to the wondering air. Then numerous tracks in the snow tell of the passage of animals and birds, whose existence one scarce suspects in the summer. The holly bushes near the houses are crowded with blackbirds and thrushes, eager for the crimson berries. If the trees are leafless, yet they are not bare, for the snow hangs in fantastic shapes from every branch and twig, all its feathery crystals glittering in the sunlight. By the shallow and undisturbed part of the mere you can hear in the night the ice crystals tinkling like fairy bells in the starlight, as they shoot across and across, to and fro, in strange intermixture, along the surface of the water that by the morning will be black and hard. Hark! "Then arose a joyous clamour from the wildfowl on the mere, Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing." |