Captain Cai took no truck (as he would have said) in the beauties of nature; but here was a scene he understood, and he began to feel at home again.  He halted, rested his elbows on a low wall and watched the gannets at their evolutions—­the poise, the terrific dive, the splash clearly visible at more than a mile’s distance.  The wall on which he leaned overhung a trim garden, gay with scentless flowers such as tulips and late daffodils, and yet odorous—­for early April has a few days during which the uncurling leaf has all the fragrance of blossom:  and this was such a day, lustrous from a bath of rain.  To our uninstructed seaman the scent seemed to exhale from the tulips; it recalled his attention from the gannets, and he drew in deep breaths of it, pondering the parterres of Kaiserskroon and Duchesse de Parme—­bold scarlet splashed with yellow—­of golden Chrysoloras, of rosy white Cottage Maids.  Unknowing it, he had a sense of beauty, and he decided that horticulture, for a leisured man, was well worth a trial.

“That’s the best of living ashore,” he told himself.  “A man can choose what hobby he will and, if he don’t like it, pick up another.”

He climbed the hill briskly, to view his own garden and take stock of its possibilities. . . .  The roses planted by Mrs Bosenna had scarcely flagged at all, thanks to the night’s rain.  Around them and to right and left along the border under the walls of the two first terraces, green shoots were pushing up from the soil—­sword-like spikes of iris, red noses of peonies, green fingers of lupins.  Into what flowers these various shootlets would expand Captain Cai knew no more than Adam, first of gardeners.  He would consult some knowledgeable person—­no, not Mrs Bosenna—­and label them ‘as per instructions’:  or, stay!  ’Bias Hunken had a weakness for small wagers.  Here was material for a long summer game, more deliberate even than draughts; to buy a botanical book and with its help back one’s fancy, flower or colour.  A capital game:  no doubt (thought Captain Cai) quite commonly played among landsmen possessing gardens.

At this point he made a discovery he had missed in the dusk overnight.  His eyes fell on a flat-topped felt-covered roof, almost level with his feet and half-hidden between two bushes (the one a myrtle, the other a mock-orange; but he knew no such distinctions).  There was yet a third terrace, then; and on this third terrace—­yes, by the Lord, a summer-house fit for a king!  Glass-fronted, with sliding sashes; match-boarded within, fitted with racks and shelves for garden tools; with ample room for chairs and a table at which two could sup and square their elbows.  Such a view, moreover!  It swept the whole harbour. . . .

Captain Cai’s first impulse was to search around for a rack whereon to stow a telescope:  his next, to run to the party-wall and hoist himself high enough to scan his friend’s garden.