Here, through that gate to the left!" We left the man lying and his horse cropping the hedgerow a few paces ahead; and struck off to the left, down across a field of young corn interspersed with poppies.

The broad estuary shone at our feet, with its beaches uncovered--for the tide was low--and across its crowded shipping I marked and recognised (for Mr.Trapp had often described them to me) a line of dismal prison-hulks, now disused, moored head to stern off a mudbank on the farther shore.
"Plain sailing, my lad," panted Mr.Jope, as the cornfield threw up its heat in our faces.

"See, yonder's Saltash!" He pointed up the river to a small town which seemed to run toppling down a steep hill and spread itself like a landslip at the base.

"I got a sister living there, if we can only fetch across; a very powerful woman; widowed, and sells fish." We took an oblique line down the hillside, and descended, some two or three hundred yards below the ferry, upon a foreshore firm for the most part and strewn with flat stones, but melting into mud by the water's edge.

A small trading ketch lay there, careened as the tide had left her; but at no great angle, thanks to her flat-bottomed build.