.

SANS RANCUNE.
A large French fishing-lugger was drifting northward on the ebb tide with its sails flapping idly against the spars.

It had been a fine morning, and the Captain, a man from Fecamp, where every boy that is born is born a sailor, had been fortunate in working his way in clear weather across the banks that lie northward of the Thames.
He had predicted all along in a voice rendered husky by much shouting in dirty weather that the fog-banks would be drifting in from the sea before nightfall.

And now he had that mournful satisfaction which is the special privilege of the pessimistic.

These fog-banks, the pest of the east coast, are the materials that form the light fleecy clouds which drift westward in sunny weather like a gauze veil across the face of the sky.