y? Oh, don't you ever go
frettin' about me, lad, when--ah, well!--when they's nothin' but fog t'
fear. Sure, 'twasn't no trouble for _me_ t' find North Tickle in the
fog. Ah, me! If 'twas only that! Sure, I bumped her nose agin the point
o' God's Warning, an' rattled her bones a bit, but, lad, me an' the punt
is used t' little things like that. Oh, ay," he repeated, dismally, "I
got _in_."

Evidently the worst had happened. "Did you?" said I, blankly. "An' was
you--was you--_cotched_?"

"Is you thinkin' o' _she_, Davy?" he answered. "Well," in a melancholy
drawl, smoothing his stubble of grey beard, his forehead deeply
furrowed, "I'm not admittin' I is. But, Davy," he added, "she cast a
hook, an'--well, I--I nibbled. Yes, I did, lad! I went an' nibbled!"

One of the twins started up in alarm. "Hark!" he whispered.

We listened--but heard nothing. A gust of wind rattled the window, and,
crying hoarsely, swept under the house. There was nothing more than
that.

"Hist!" said the twin.

We heard only the ominous mutter and sigh of the gust departing.

"Jacky," said the skipper, anxiously, "what was you thinkin' you heared,
b'y?"

Jacky fidgetted in his seat. "'Twas like the mail-boat's whistle, zur,"
he answered, "but 'twas sort o' hoarser."

"Why, lad," said the skipper, "the mail-boat's not handy by two hundred
miles! 'Twas but the wind."

But he scratched his head in a puzzled way.

"Ay, maybe, zur," Jacky replied, still alert for a sound from the sea,
"but 'twas not _like_ the wind."

Skipper Tommy held up his hand. "Ay," said he, when we had listened a
long time, "'twas but the wind."

"Ay," said we all, "'twas but the wind."

"Ah, well, Davy," the skipper resumed, "she cast a hook, as I was
sayin', an' I nibbled."

The twins groaned in concert.

"But the good Lard, Davy," the skipper went on, "had sent a switch o'
wind from the sou'west. So they was a bit o' lop on the sea, an' 'twas
t' that I turned, when the case got desperate. An' desperate it soon
got, lad. Ah, indeed! 'long about Herring Head it got fair desperate.
'Skipper Thomas,' says she, 'we're gettin' old, you an' me,' says she.
'Sure, mum,' says I, 'not _you_, mum! I'll never give in t' that,' says
I."

Our faces fell.

"'Twas what I done," the skipper persisted, with an air of guilt and
remorse. "I just, felt like doin' it, an' so I done it. 'I'll never give
in to it, mum,' says I, 'that _you're_ gettin' old.'"

I groaned with t