s to receding
Tetby. They were answered by rousing cheers from the shore, hoarse and
masculine, to drown the lachrymose attempts of the women.

They watched her until their eyes were dim, and she was a mere white
triangular speck on the horizon. Then, like a melting snowflake, she
vanished into air, and the Tetby folk, some envying the bold mariners,
and others thankful that their lives were cast upon the safe and
pleasant shore, slowly dispersed to their homes.

Months passed, and the quiet routine of Tetby went on undisturbed.
Other craft came into port and, discharging and loading in an easy,
comfortable fashion, sailed again. The keel of another ship was being
laid in the shipyard, and slowly the time came round when the return of
_Tetby's Pride_, for so she was named, might be reasonably looked for.

It was feared that she might arrive in the night--the cold and cheerless
night, when wife and child were abed, and even if roused to go down on
to the quay would see no more of her than her side-lights staining the
water, and her dark form stealing cautiously up the river. They would
have her come by day. To see her first on that horizon, into which she
had dipped and vanished. To see her come closer and closer, the good
stout ship seasoned by southern seas and southern suns, with the crew
crowding the sides to gaze at Tetby, and see how the children had grown.

But she came not. Day after day the watchers waited for her in vain. It
was whispered at length that she was overdue, and later on, but only by
those who had neither kith nor kin aboard of her, that she was missing.

Long after all hope had gone wives and mothers, after the manner of
their kind, watched and waited on the cheerless quay. One by one they
stayed away, and forgot the dead to attend to the living. Babes grew
into sturdy, ruddy-faced boys and girls, boys and girls into young men
and women, but no news of the missing ship, no word from the missing
men. Slowly year succeeded year, and the lost ship became a legend. The
man who had built her was old and grey, and time had smoothed away the
sorrows of the bereaved.

It was on a dark, blustering September night that an old woman sat by
her fire knitting. The fire was low, for it was more for the sake of
company than warmth, and it formed an agreeable contrast to the wind
which whistled round the house, bearing on its wings the sound of the
waves as they came crashing ashore.

"God help those at sea