verandah. As for me-I could not with my bad knee get out of the cart until the syce came. Shah-u-din had got down before, and followed Mrs Grey, and he now stood a little apart.

Johnny, I could see, looked very white; he sat down on the verandah steps, and Mrs Grey knelt on the gravel beside him, speaking to him. Major White and Phillips were there too, but I couldn't hear what they said. It was perfectly It was perfectly awful to sit there doing nothing, knowing that the best fellow in the world was going to die before my eyes, my eyes, though it wasn't of my own feelings I thought, but of that poor little woman. It seemed so dreadful, too, that we should all be there, looking on, as it were, and yet we could not go away and leave her alone with him. I suppose only a few seconds passed really, but it felt like hours; and though it was a hot night, I give you my word I ran cold all over. It was so horrible. Then one of the subalterns ran up with a very white face and whispered to Phillips. I heard afterwards that he told him the doctor had been called away to the civil station ten miles off, and we all knew long before he could be fetohed back Grey would be dead. Just then my syce ran up to the pony's head, and I was able to get out of the trap. I stood hesitating, wondering what I could do, but the moment Shah-u-din saw I was moving, he came towards me.

"Sahib-Sahib," he said, speaking in an agitated whisper, "if the Huzoors wait for the Dokitor Sahib it will be too late. I can cure cobra bite. Many times have I saved the black men, and I can save the white Sahib too. Only see. It is true talk, not lies."

I could see the man was in earnest, but it was impossible to believe him. I knew there was no known cure for cobrabite, and it seemed so fearfully cruel to raise false hopes. The Major and Phillips had moved some paces away from the Greys. I could just see Johnny's face, but Mrs Grey's back was towards me. I could hear an occasional sob; I couldn't help hearing it, though I tried not to, everything was so still; but mostly she seemed to be talking, urging something on him. Of course I didn't stare, but I couldn't help seeing.

After all, I thought, why shouldn't Shah-u-din see what he could do? It was absolutely the only chance; but it seemed so cruel to disturb the Greys if it was all for nothing.

"Sahib, it will soon be too late," Shah-u-din urged, at my side, and I could see he looked very anxious. The moon went behind a cloud just then, and the slight darkness made me think of the dream he had told us only that afternoon, which now seemed ages ago. Grey must have remembered it too, for she sprang to her feet and faced round, calling shrilly

Mrs

"Shah-u-din! Shah-u-din!"

He did not waste a moment, but ran eagerly towards her, and knelt down beside Johnny. "Huzoor, in a few moments Sahib will be cured," he said reassuringly, and his tone was so confident that I felt at once he really believed what he said. The whole affair was so extraordinary. His dream, Mrs Grey's presentiment of trouble, the horrible scene, with Johnny risking his life. It was all a kind of nightmare, and after it nothing could have surprised

me much.

Shah-u-din took charge from that moment. He had made one of the servants bring him a glass of water before, and into that he now put a small flat grey stone, something like pumice-stone, and quite smooth, as though it had been constantly used. As soon as it was thoroughly wet he took it out, and passed it over the spot where the cobra had bitten. I own to a feeling of most horrible disappointment here. I could with pleasure have throttled the man for raising our hopes, for what appeared to be a piece of childish superstition; but at the second pass the stone clung to the wound, just as if it had been attracted to it; and Shah-u-din stood up, looking completely satisfied.

"All is well," he said; "the snake-stone draweth the poison from the veins of the Sahib."

And the odd thing is that he was absolutely correct. After a time the stone fell off, its work done. Shah-u-din put it in water again, and this time the water changed colour

and became opaque, something like milk. We all saw itpresently Johnny, though he looked rather shaken, said he felt perfectly well-and you can imagine the excitement and the talking and congratulations, we were all so worked up, and in the middle of the confusion Shah-u-din must have slipped away, for when we looked for him he was nowhere to be found. We thought he had gone back to the Greys' compound, but the next morning when they sent for him the old Bearer explained he had gone "No man knew whither.' He indeed disappeared as suddenly as he had come, and none of us have ever set eyes on him, or his wonderful snake - stone, from that day to this. The Greys were terribly vexed, as they naturally wished to reward him, but the Bearer explained that Shah-u-din could take no money from them-for ". were not he, and all his house, bound by a vow to serve all of the house of General Grey Sahib, since the old bad days when the General had saved the life of Shah-u-din's father, when the knife was even at his throat."

It was all very mysterious, but we had to make the best of it, as we couldn't get anything more out of the old chap. I have never seen another snake-stone, but I'm told they are well known in South Africa

where they are the most cherished possession in many an old Boer family. A Boer will part with most things for

'filthy lucre," but no inducement is great enough to induce him to sell his snake-stone, for it may well mean life or deathat least, that is what he thinks. When we told our doctor about it he was very provoking, and scoffed like anything, and nothing any of us could say would ever make him own he believed in snake-stone. He declares that the cobra that bit Grey must have been either a young one with undeveloped poison fangs, or, if full-grown, that it had expended its poison on some animal. It is no good pointing out how ill Grey looked. He just laughs and says he wishes he had been there. He could have worked a miraculous cure just as well as any fortune-teller. Of course he can't explain Shahu-din's dream,-that he puts down to coincidence; and as

neither party can convince the other, we have had to leave it at that among the many queer things that can't be explained.

Fuller sent over the thousand rupees the next morning, with an abject note, saying he would never dare to face Mrs Grey again, and as a matter of fact she has never forgiven him, though Johnny was really quite as much to blame.

The Greys have been quite prosperous since. He got the Adjutancy soon after, and now he is doing two years at the Quetta Staff College, which is sure to mean well - paid staff billets. I think that's all I have to tell, except that the White boys are generally called "The Heavenly Twins," because they are the biggest little demons unhung.

A. M. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF.

THE harbour of Rye has been steadily silting up for four hundred years and more, just as its neighbour, Dunge. ness, has been pushing out farther and farther into the world. The basin which once rang with the chime of shipwrights' hammers and the cries of stevedores and mariners is now a waste of mud and weeds, where rotting perches and rotting boats keep company with the sandpipers and gulls. A shadow of a coasting trade subsists, but vessels drawing more than twelve feet cannot enter, and even these are left on the mud in the channel itself at low water. But in 1700 the port had not sunk so low as this.

The coasting and fishing trade which it supported was still considerable; and it was of yet greater value, for all its difficult entrance, as a harbour of refuge. There was no other in the long stretch of coast from the Downs to Beachy Head. Dover, Folkestone, and Hastings were then mere open roadsteads; and the westwardbound vessel which was driven, by stress of weather or the the enemy's privateers, to seek some shelter, must make the narrow channel of Rye or else hold on for Cuckmere or the Newhaven river, forty seamiles away. The town of Rye was surrounded by an old wall, but it lay some way

VOL. CXCIV.-NO. MCLXXVII.

inland from the harbour; and the only show of protection provided for the latter was Henry VIII.'s ruined castle of Camber.

On the 17th of August 1710 the Mayor of Rye wrote to Admiral Aylmer, then lying at St Helens, as follows::

"This comes in behalfe of the poor Fishermen of Rye, who have not been able to get bread for their families since a Reprizall hath been made on the French Fishermen; we not being able to obtain a Convoy for them and the Privateers lying continually in the Bay, that they lye from week'send to week's end, and without ever going to sea. Dover, Fowlston and Hastings have Forts and Castles to resort to, but Rye being a Tydal Harbour, and lying deeply embayed, we are the most exposed of any on the Coast; which obliges us to beg your Honour will send us a small ship, one of 8, 10 or 12 guns is better for us than a bigger ship; and if it be not possible to obtain one to be a standing Convoy we must most earnestly beg for a frigate to see the Boats that go to Yarmouth safe towards that

place; they design to sail from Rye the last of August or the first of September."

Thus far the Mayor of Rye. A frigate may have been sent for the Yarmouth boats; but it does not appear that the poor fishermen of Rye ever got their standing convoy. Indeed, as we shall see, there was not a port or a roadstead in the kingdom that did not need one. We can fortunately

consult a more circumstantial

2 s

detail of the state of affairs at Rye: a detail which may be taken as characteristic of the manner in which the shipping was held up all round the coast of England "from week's-end to week's-end," as the mayor affirmed. It is a fragment, apparently, of a ship's log or a captain's journal; but as it was very carelessly inserted in (or copied from) a petition with regard to this grievance addressed to the Admiralty Commissioners by certain Sussex merchants, the names of ship and captain have been lost. The time was the autumn of 1706 or 1707. The vessel was ready to sail by the middle of October, if not before, but was delayed indefinitely by the following cogent reasons.

On the 15th of October (the master records), when he desired to put to sea, there were two privateers and a snow off the harbour. On the 17th the privateers were still there. On the 22nd, two ships (perhaps the same) of thirty guns were lying within three miles of the shore. On the 24th, four French men-of-war were at anchor within sight of the town. On the 28th a fleet passed by which he could have joined, but "there lay three French privateers betwixt them and him, and seven in sight, some off the harbour and some to the westward." On the 30th a Dutch dogger was chased inshore by several sail, and narrowly escaped. On the 5th of November there arrived a sloop from Lisbon, which, after having been boarded and plundered by

several privateers in the Channel, had since seen three more off the Isle of Wight, three off Beachy Head, and five or six others watching Rye itself. On the 8th, the master writes: "There are now in sight six sail of French and a sloop. Three lie under fair lee [Fairlight, to the W. of Rye], the other three off the Ness [Dungeness], and the sloop is come to an anchor within a mile of the harbour, right in the Channel. . . .'

With this the fragment ends. It is likely (considering the season) that on the days not specified there was bad weather, which, while it might drive the privateers off-shore, would also prevent the ships in harbour putting to sea. At any rate, here we have an English port, midway between our two principal naval stations, as effectually blockaded by a few privateers as were any of the French naval bases by the whole English fleet a hundred years later; and this only a decade after La Hogue, only two or three years after the capture of Gibraltar, at a time when Marlborough was in the full tide of success on the Continent, when France was almost prostrate, and when the English fleet should have possessed (and technically did possess) undisputed command of the Channel. Nor was the evil either local or transient. It was widespread and perpetual. We really have no reason for supposing that, without the aid of a miracle, the blockaded ship at Rye ever got to sea at all; and what Rye was suffer