intelligence concerning the currents which bore the floating flask

ashore. The situation filled by Barkilphedro has been abolished more

than a century, but it had its real utility. The last holder was William

Hussey, of Doddington, in Lincolnshire. The man who held it was a sort

of guardian of the things of the sea. All the closed and sealed-up

vessels, bottles, flasks, jars, thrown upon the English coast by the

tide were brought to him. He alone had the right to open them; he was

first in the secrets of their contents; he put them in order, and

ticketed them with his signature. The expression "loger un papier au

greffe," still used in the Channel Islands, is thence derived. However,

one precaution was certainly taken. Not one of these bottles could be

unsealed except in the presence of two jurors of the Admiralty sworn to

secrecy, who signed, conjointly with the holder of the jetsam office,

the official report of the opening. But these jurors being held to

secrecy, there resulted for Barkilphedro a certain discretionary

latitude; it depended upon him, to a certain extent, to suppress a fact

or bring it to light.

These fragile floating messages were far from being what Barkilphedro

had told Josiana, rare and insignificant. Some times they reached land

with little delay; at others, after many years. That depended on the

winds and the currents. The fashion of casting bottles on the surface of

the sea has somewhat passed away, like that of vowing offerings, but in

those religious times, those who were about to die were glad thus to

send their last thought to God and to men, and at times these messages

from the sea were plentiful at the Admiralty. A parchment preserved in

the hall at Audlyene (ancient spelling), with notes by the Earl of

348

The Man Who Laughs