A Sailor's Lass — Emma Leslie

"Mother, we're afloat again." It was a gruff, sleepy voice that spoke, and the old fisherman turned over and snored on, as though the fact of their home being afloat was of no consequence to him. His wife, however, was by no means so easy in her mind, for it was only during the equinoctial gales and an unusually high tide that their home was lifted from its moorings; and now it had been swinging and swaying for hours, and the rusty chains that held it fast to some posts were creaking and straining as though the next gust of wind would certainly carry them out to sea or drive them up the river, where they would inevitably be swamped in a very short time, for their boat-home was leaky at the bottom-had been a water-logged boat before the fisherman took possession of it and turned it into a quaint-looking cottage by running up some wooden walls along the sides, and roofing it in with planks and tarpaulin. Thus converted into a dwelling-house, the boat had been secured, by four chains fixed to posts in the ground, on the top of a mud-bank that formed the boundary of the mouth of the river.