seeing his children and grandchildren grow up around him, and dies at last in 1875 at the ripe age of eighty-three.

And this is not an isolated case. The Pratts of Cellardyke, father and son, could each tell a moving tale. The father, old Alexander Pratt, was one of the veterans of the naval volunteer reserve, who responded to the call and went out with Admiral Gambier to Copenhagen in 1807. The Cellardyke men played their part well in that bloody battle, but even better in the terrific storm that burst on the squadron on the way home. In the height of the tempest, Pratt, stationed in the foretop of a three decker, suddenly saw the gleam of white breakers close ahead. "Wear the ship," he shouted; "we're ashore on the Goodwins." The steersman hesitated, but Pratt leapt to the deck and, throwing discipline to the winds, seized the wheel and brought the ship round, undeterred even by the threatening pistol of the officer of the watch. The ship was saved, and not only the ship, but the squadron of five vessels that followed in her wake and repeated the manœuvre.

His son Robert rivals Wilson in the adventures which crowded so thickly upon him.

A cabin-boy at the age of eleven in the Excise yacht, Prince of Wales, he started in the King's service and four years later transferred to the Dundee whaler, Mary Ann. But the Greenland ships were favourite hunting-grounds of the press-gang, and after one voyage he changed to the Hope trading between Leith and London. It was a case, however, of out of the frying-pan into the fire, for he was seized before they weathered Inchkeith. Undismayed, the youth, watching his chance, sprang from the fore-chains of the guard-ship on to the rigging of the ferry smack, Providence, which tacked under her lee in half a gale of wind. So quick was he that he was safely landed at Kinghorn before any pursuit could be made, and soon he was back in Cellardyke. By the connivance of St. Andrews friends, he obtained a berth in a trader to London; yet, scarcely was his vessel in the Thames than he was taken again, this time in company with an old schoolfellow, Thomas Watson. But he was no more willing to give

in than before, and Watson, being of the same mind, while the ship lay moored off Greenwich, the two slipped overboard in a desperate attempt to swim ashore. Poor Watson was swept away by the tide and drowned, but Pratt reached the bank in safety. Soon he is at sea again, this time in a Greenwich whaler, and then for five years in a troopship. Getting on in his profession, he obtains a berth as mate of a collier brig, but on his first voyage they are captured by a French privateer. Then, like Wilson, he undergoes all the hardships of imprisonment. Three hundred miles the miserable fugitives have to march in mid-winter, till they reach an old fortress where they are cast into a stone-flagged chamber at the top of the wall. At first utter fatigue made them welcome any resting-place, however rude, but soon reviving strength made their prison as irksome as a tomb. "Better die like men than starve to death like rats in a hole," cried one of the eighteen, and to escape they resolved. One had a marline-spike and by its help the iron bars of the single window were loosened and re

moved, when a rope of blankets enabled them to reach the ground. A raging snowstorm covered their tracks, and when they could go no farther they dug a hole in the drifts and lay safe and warm. After six weeks, assisted by the kindly villagers in the little places through which they passed, for they avoided the towns, they reached the sea and had the good luck to find an English ship which landed them safe at Falmouth. Robert Pratt returned to Cellardyke, where he followed the whale-fishing, making no less than thirtyseven voyages in all. At last, disabled by an accident, he took a new lease of life as a sailmaker, a craft taught him by his father years before-and died at last in June 1870 at the age of eighty-one.

CHAPTER XII

CRAIL

RIGHT in the East Neuk of Fife lies the little town of Crail. Of the twelve royal burghs on the north shore of the Forth, Crail is the oldest. It is said to have been made a royal burgh by Malcolm Canmore in the eleventh century, and a charter of David 1. exists, dated 1150, while another was received from Robert the Bruce in 1306.

It would be difficult to find a name spelt in so many different ways as this simple little word Crail. Caraile, Karall, Karol, Karel, Karile, Carale, Kraol, Karil, Karall, Krell, Crell, Creyle, Creall, Craal, Carreill, Carel, Carole, Carraill, and Craill are some of the forms it assumes in old documents, but the explanation is simple. In the old days spelling was not regarded as the hard-and-fast thing