me o' they bladder-headed
friends o' brewers. _They_ don' like wrinklin' wi' Jake; makes 'em blow
too much when they has to carry a bushel o' wrinkles, like I've a-done
often, over the rocks an' up the cliff, two or dree miles home. They
Double-X Barrels can't du that. Lord! can't expect 'em to.--_We'll_ go
in the _Moondaisy_ t'morrow, an' then if we can't sail home, we can
row, an' if it comes on a fresh wind, we'll haul her up to Refuge Cove
an' go'n look how my orchards be getting on."

It is good to hear Uncle Jake talk about the work that nobody else will
do. (The exposure alone would be too much for many of them.) His face
wrinkles up within its grey picture-frame beard, his keen yet wistful
eyes open wide, and he draws up that youthful body of his--clad in
faded blue jumper and torn trousers--on which the head of a venerable
old man seems so incongruously set. He is the owner of a big drifter
which hardly pays her expenses; he feels that taking out pleasure
parties is no work for a fisherman--'never wasn't used to be at the
beck an' call o' they sort o' people when I wer young';--and therefore
he picks up a living, laborious but very independent, between high and
low tide mark for many miles east and west of Seacombe. Nobody learns
exactly when or where he goes, nor what little valuables are in the old
sack that he carries. He seldom sleeps for more than two hours on end;
has breakfast at midnight, dinner in the early morning, and tea-supper
only if it happens to be handy; and he feeds mainly on bread, cheese,
sugar and much butter, with an occasional feast of half a dozen
mackerel at once, or a skate or a small conger. Singularly
straightforward in all his dealings, a little of the old West-country
wrecking spirit yet survives in him, and he enjoys nothing better than
smuggling jetsam past the coastguards. Social position saves no one
from hearing what Uncle Jake thinks. His tongue is loaded with scorn
and sarcasm, but his heart holds nothing but kindness. He will jeer and
taunt a man off the Front, and give him money round the corner or food
in house. His nicknames are terrible--they stick. Few would care to
turn and fight such an old man, and if they did he would almost
certainly knock them into the dust or throw them into the sea. He is
childless; and, since her illness several years ago, his wife, an
untidy woman with beautiful eyes, has been scatterbrained and more
trouble than use, a spender of his savings