He was pocketing an income which far exceeded his most golden visions.  And therefore naturally his first idea was to make that income larger and larger still.  He commenced by putting up the price of the afternoon trips.  There was a vast deal too much competition for seats in the afternoon.  This competition led to quarrels, unseemly language, and deplorable loss of temper.  It also led to loss of time.  Denry was therefore benefiting humanity by charging three shillings after two o’clock.  This simple and benign device equalised the competition throughout the day, and made Denry richer by seven or eight pounds a week.

But his fertility of invention did not stop there.  One morning the earliest excursionists saw a sort of Robinson Crusoe marooned on the strip of beach near the wreck.  All that heartless fate had left him appeared to be a machine on a tripod and a few black bags.  And there was no shelter for him save a shallow cave.  The poor fellow was quite respectably dressed.  Simeon steered the boat round by the beach, which shelved down sharply, and as he did so the Robinson Crusoe hid his head in a cloth, as though ashamed, or as though he had gone mad and believed himself to be an ostrich.  Then apparently he thought the better of it, and gazed boldly forth again.  And the boat passed on its starboard side within a dozen feet of him and his machine.  Then it put about and passed on the port side.  And the same thing occurred on every trip.  And the last trippers of the day left Robinson Crusoe on the strip of beach in his solitude.

The next morning a photographer’s shop on the Parade pulled down its shutters and displayed posters all over the upper part of its windows.  And the lower part of the windows held sixteen different large photographs of the lifeboat broad-side on.  The likenesses of over a hundred visitors, many of them with sou’-westers, cork belts, and life-lines, could be clearly distinguished in these picturesque groups.  A notice said:—­

“Copies of any of these magnificent permanent holographs can be supplied, handsomely mounted, at a charge of two shillings each.  Orders executed in rotation, and delivered by post if necessary.  It is respectfully requested that cash be paid with order.  Otherwise orders cannot be accepted.”

Very few of those who had made the trip could resist the fascination of a photograph of themselves in a real lifeboat, manned by real heroes and real Norwegians on real waves, especially if they had worn the gear appropriate to lifeboats.  The windows of the shop were beset throughout the day with crowds anxious to see who was in the lifeboat, and who had come out well, and who was a perfect fright.  The orders on the first day amounted to over fifteen pounds, for not everybody was content with one photograph.  The novelty was acute and enchanting, and it renewed itself each day.  “Let’s go down and look at the lifeboat photographs,” people would