A bad time of the tide to get a boat off sharp, and a long shelving
run of sandy shingle before we reach the sea; for all the boats are
on the upper strand of the beach, above the last high-water mark, and
the flow of the tide is scarcely an hour old. There is a short squat
cobble, flat-bottomed and of intolerable weight, down near the waters,
and its owner makes for it. Another man drives him out seawards,
against the constant lift of breaking waves, large enough to be
troublesome, small enough to be numerous. They give no chance to the
second man to leap into the boat, so deep has he to go, pushing on
until the pads are out and the boat controlled; but he has barely time
to feel the underdraw of the recoiling wave when the straight scour
of a keel comes down along the sand and pebbles--the Ellen Jane,
St. Sennans--half-pushed, half-borne by a crew three minutes have
extemporised. You two in the bows, and you two astarn, and the
spontaneous natural leader--the man the emergency makes--at the
tiller-ropes, and Ellen Jane is off, well drenched at the outset. An
oar swings round high in the air, not to knock one of you two astarn
into the water, and then, "Give way!" and then the short, quick rhythm
of the stroke, and four men at their utmost stress, each knowing life
and death may hang upon the greatness of his effort.

The cobble is soon outshot, but its owner will not give in. He bears
away from the course of the boat that has passed him, to seek their
common object where the tide-drift may have swept it, beyond some
light craft at their moorings which would have hidden it for a while.
He has the right of it this time, for as he passes, straining at his
sculls, under the stern of a pleasure-yacht at anchor, his eye is
caught by a black spot rising on a wave, and he makes for it. Not too
fast at the last, though, but cautiously, so as to grasp the man with
the life-belt and hold him firm till help shall come to get him on
board. He might easily have overshot him; but he has him now, and the
four-oar sights him as she swings round between the last-moored boat
and the pier; and comes apace, the quicker for the tide.

"What is it ye say, master? What do ye make it out the gentleman says,
Peter?" For Fenwick, hauled on board the cobble with the help of a man
from the other boat, who returns to his oar, is alive and conscious,
but not much more. A brandy-flask comes from somewhere in the
steerage, where a mop and a tin p