d with herring, have occasionally been
caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other
boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry),
they fitted out too.

We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.--off land,
that is--so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell
running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and
the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard
the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had
compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in
again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles
from land in ten minutes under the hour--speed, that, for a
twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled
to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands,
was--as Tony beautifully put it--'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was
trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great
comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird.
Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west,
and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We
heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious
dialogue. "What do 'ee think o' it, then?"

"'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along."

[Sidenote: _HAULING INBOARD_]

"If a skat o' rain comes--and 'tis raining on land, seems so--the
wind'll back out to sou'west, an' us'll hae to rin for it. A perty
lop'll get up tu, an' we'm more'n a mile from land."

"Us'll haul in be 'leven. No gude hanging on out here. If the wind
_du_ back...."

I have never heard them talk so much about the weather. And all the
while, the sky drove into splendid cloud-forms, all windy, nearly all
rainy. We lost the Eddystone light, then lost the Seacombe light and
recovered the former, as a storm drifted along shore. From time to time
we thought the wind was backing a bit.

Supper, for me, had to be crammed down on a rather queasy stomach.
"We'm all ways to once!" Tony remarked. The wind did definitely back a
point or two. "Only let it once die away," said Tony in the tone of _I
told you so_; "then yu'll see how it can spring from the sou'west when
'tis a-minded."

One minute I wished myself home, safe in bed, and thought with
grotesque grief of some unfinished work. Next minute, I knew that I
would not have