mouth of the Avon, a French nigger who had finished his trick at the wheel, instead of descending by the lee-ladder, jumped off the poop before the companion. This was sacrilege in sea custom, and MacCumber, who was standing by, hurled an iron weight at the offender, catching him fair in the head. The unfortunate black lived long enough to be carried ashore, where he expired. He was buried in the little churchyard in Chiveree, overlooking Horton Bluffs, ' and lucky Water Street tar. he were one of the ones," observed the He told me also of a Liverpool packet sailor named Paddy Moran, who was delivered to MacCumber by a crimp from Deptford. "Poor Paddy didn't live to get out of the Channel. 'E didn't jump quick enough when a rope surged at the capstan, and MacCumber ups and brains 'im then and there, and jammed 'is body through the 'awspipe wid the anchor-chain as it was runnin' out." MacCumber's name at last became so feared that it was almost impossible to get a to get a crew to sail with him. The men would not sign the articles under such a master. To avert this the owners resorted to the subterfuge of signing on the crew with another captain, and when they were dropping the pilot the dreaded Bluenose would come aboard. In 1914 I met in the American Navy at Vera Cruz a warrant officer serving as tug-boat skipper, who in his early days had been shanghaied on board one of MacCumber's ships. He was an old man, formerly from Sweden. When a mere lad he told me that he had been gathered in by a boardinghouse runner on Paradise Alley in Liverpool, and carried aboard the Bluenose ship. As soon as he found that he was exposed to the dreadful fate of the outward-bound with Captain Bill, he made up his mind that no peril could be so great as staying on board that ship. Late at night he went over the side with a piece of hatch-combing, and drifted for over an hour in the darkness of the Mersey, when by good fortune he was picked up. "But I would far sooner have drownded," said the old chap, "than to have risked the voyage with that Bluenose devil." Bully MacCumber's last command was the Orion, a large ship owned by the Dimmocks of Windsor. The Orion sailed on her maiden voyage from Hantsport to Tilbury. She had taken on a general cargo for the Far East at Tilbury Docks, and was towed to the Downs to await her crew. The crew were duly sent by the shipping agent from Tower Hill, London, and arrived in charge of a host of boardinghouse runners. It was a bitter night in the Downs, and the Orion riding at her anchor was exposed to a biting blast from down Chan nel. But the bitter cold and the inclemency of the night only added to Bully MacCumber's delight in hazing his new crew. He ordered all hands aloft with sandstone and canvas to polish the yards. Two men did not show sufficient alacrity, and MacCumber chuckled at the opportunity they gave him to 66 throw the fear of God into the rest." When the crew at last were released and allowed to go below, they went with murder in their hearts. In the forecastle was a quantity of saltpetre, to which they set fire, and fanned by the gale without, the forward part of the ship was soon in flames. There was nothing for Captain MacCumber but to beach his ship, which he did, crashing on to a lee shore, a total wreck. The mystic strain of the Bluenose Gael is shown in the legends that cling to some of our old shipyards. One of the most famous of the Bluenose clipper ships was the Marco Polo, built in 1851 by James Smith at St John. She was the pioneer clipper of the Australian Black Ball Line. According to a romantic story, it is stated that when the Marco Polo was building, Mr Smith, the owner of the shipyard, found a pot of gold at the end of the Marsh Road. By this lucky find he was enabled to finance the construction of his great ship. More substantial was the pot of gold which the Marco Polo brought to her owners almost as soon as she was off the ways. Her first voyage from England to Australia was made in sixty-eight days, which long remained the record. In her first year afloat she sailed twice round the globe. A partner in one of the famous shipyards of St John was John Frazer, formerly a moulder from Pictou. Mr Frazer was commonly known as as "Eagle Johnnie." When he was a smal boy a strous eagle had attempted to bear him away and devour him, hence his high-sounding appellation. But what a name for a builder of flying clipper ships! Why did the Bluenose skipper leave the sea? Because of the passing of the sailingship is commonly given as the reason, but that is superficial. The same men who gained our renown in sail would have gained us an equal renown in steam. The Bluenose skippers and the Yankee captains alike turned from their maritime empire because they lost the vision of the sea. The railroads, the prairie farms, and the wealth of an opening West allured them, and they turned their backs upon blue water. England, with her cliffs for ever whitened by the foam of the Channel, has never been allowed to lose the vision of the sea, and she has never lost her heritage upon the water. That same heritage may yet return to the Bluenose breed. STORM IN THE DESERT. BY EDWARD LIVEING. HE got up from his table and advanced hesitatingly towards mine. I felt that I had seen his face somewhere before, and racked my mind for his name, but without success. Perhaps this was because I was tired. I had only just reached Cairo from England, had seen my luggage deposited in an upper bedroom of the I suppose ? he asked. Hotel Continental, and come out on to the terrace to enjoy the comparatively cool evening air and a "John Collins ". a drink that for Egypt in June has no equal. But enough of myself. club. His face had been lit up then with youthful enthusiasm at the prospect of going to Egypt. Now his fair, almost white hair still fell in a childish curl over his forehead, but deep lines lay under his eyes and a queer quivering pallor beneath his sunburnt features. You've heard all about it, About what ? " "About Stanhope, I mean? " 'Nothing at all," I answered in growing astonishment. Then I noticed that the boy was almost in tears, and began to realise that he had been Before he reached me I had through some terrible ordeal, recalled his name. and was badly in need of sympathy. "Lasserhayes!" I gasped in astonishment, holding out my hand. He seemed too agitated to take it, and said hurriedly, Thank God I've met you, old chap, but we can't talk here. Do come to a less crowded part of the terrace-behind that palm-tree over there." As we walked over to the spot, I noticed people turning round from conversations and looking curiously at the boy. We sat down at a secluded table, and he immediately laid his elbows on it and leant right across it to speak to me. He looked years older than when I had last seen him about six months before in a London Jeb'ail lies fifteen miles out in the Sahara. The nearest village to it in the valley of the Nile is a compact collection of mud buildings harbouring a thousand people. Its name is Messara. If you draw a line from Messara to Jeb'ail you can extend it westwards through about two thousand five hundred miles of blank desert till you approach the shores of the Atlantic. Perhaps this sounds rather an exaggerated way of putting things, but it is the kind of thought that enters into your mind when your body enters into the gebel. I. than anything else. Our camels had been ambling slowly up a long wadi leading gradually upwards through the limestone hills that shut in the Nile valley. Suddenly we were out in the open in a region of sand covered by thousands of enormous round stones. About half a mile away two or three small tells rose up out of the flatness, looking like miniature volcanoes. Towards the southeast you could see miles and miles of desert cut into vast furrows and ridges by several parallel ranges of limestone hills. I can tell you, I felt the sense of desolation there far more than I had felt it in mid-ocean a week before. suppose that's because there's nothing moving. It's as it has been for thousands of years, and will remain for thousands of years. But I tell you the chief reason: it's the silence of empty spaces. I My God! I'd never before Amen-hotep, the old fellow who had designed the tomb and been buried in it, was believed to have been a madman. But there was something else about the hill It was Jeb'ail towards which the two Egyptologists, Gordon Stanhope and Dick Lasserhayes, were heading with their small cavalcade of camels, drivers, and servants on a day early in January. Not until an hour's trot had brought them on to the crest of the fourth limestone ridge did its long, softly massive contours become visible, rising out of the desert to the north-west like the bole of a giant felled tree in waste ground. Dick, sensitive as he was, never forgot his first sight of Jeb'ail. A north wind, driving white clouds across the vast blue of the sky, made shadow after shadow go chasing across its grey, slightly - indented bosom, imparting to it a more than usually mysterious appearance. "I know you'll think me imaginative and childish," Lasserhayes had continued. "Well, I admit I am, or rather that I was then. But that hill held my gaze from the very moment I caught sight of it. I think this was partly because of its conspicuousness in the surrounding desert, and because I had heard so many tales of its tomb, which had been only discovered and excavated during last year, and on which we were to work, tracing the mural paintings, which were said to be the products of insanity. At least, 66 For a long time we trotted on, neither Stanhope nor I uttering a word. Then Stanhope, pulling at his thick little moustache, a habit of his before speaking, pointed suddenly ahead. Tents'll be up, thank God! by time we get there. We'll have a meal and then to bed. Up to-morrow at half-past six. Must get on with things. Tomb completely excavated, so we'll start tracing after a bit of a look-over. Interesting place, I expect. At least, fairly interesting, though rumours always exaggerate.' re "It looks an interesting place, doesn't it?' marked. Perhaps we'll stumble across some more tombs there.' "Perhaps,' replied Stanhope in that staccato manner of his. 'Anyhow, we've got our work cut out as it is over this tomb.' Before we reached the shadow of Jeb'ail the sun, just like a great yellow ball, fell quickly beneath its skyline, leaving behind in the lower sky a sort of shore of orangecoloured promontories jutting into a sea of carmine sprinkled with the golden islands of slender clouds. "I said there was something else about Jeb'ail. It had looked so peaceful from a dis |