THERE was no use in arguing with a person like this.

I promptly put such a strain on my memory that by and by even the shoal water and the countless crossing-marks began to stay with me.

But the result was just the same.

I never could more than get one knotty thing learned before another presented itself.

Now I had often seen pilots gazing at the water and pretending to read it as if it were a book; but it was a book that told me nothing.