Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/173

Rh Keene would collect and dry these carefully, and eventually smoke them with much zest. They would turn an ordinary smoker sick, so rank and strong are they, and impart an odour which the old novels used to say may be “more easily imagined than described!” A story goes to the effect that Keene once attended a wedding after a pipe or two of “dottles.” There was a fragrance about the church that day, but it was not of incense or of flowers.

But to resume. The egg-shells from breakfast were saved and started, with lighted candle-ends in them as ballast, after dusk on the stream, and on a calm night would float a considerable distance dowm the tide before becoming extinguished. Once the coast-guard’s boat came alongside, and the officer wanted to know what we were doing. This circumstance tickled Keene immensely, and he exploded in gentle chuckles for some time after- wards. But neither this nor any other freak could raise a smile upon the faces of our crew. I never knew such stolid, impassive creatures, or more im- pervious to fun of any kind. I laid myself out to make them laugh, but though I indulged in the most frivolous and ridiculous antics I could invent, never succeeded in making them smile.

It was about sixteen years after this before I again went out with Keene. He had recom- mended South wold in Suffolk as a good sketching