over and knocking the boats about the road. I haven
been out sea sinsce it is still rough hear now it is blowing a gale
of wind I expect we shall get some witing and herring in the bay
when the weather get fine the sea hear is like the cliff now red.
Us aven catched nort nobody cant go to sea.

"TONY.

"I will write a letter soon.

"P.S. Tony just waked up. George is coming home, Tony mazed with
excitement and wishes you was here.

"MAM W."

So do I!

3

[Sidenote: _TONY OFF TO SEA_]

The evening before I left Seacombe, Tony was telling us how upset and
miserable he was, how he cried, when his two elder brothers left home
to join the Navy. Also he told us what I knew nothing of before--his
own one attempt to go to sea aboard a merchantman. When he was at
Cloade's he looked on fishing as a refuge from groceries, and when he
had given up groceries for fishing, he looked on a ship's fo'c'stle as
a refuge from that. Fishing was very bad one summer. He and Dick Yeo
agreed to run away together:

"Us was doin' nort noway wi' the fishing--nort 't all. Father, Granfer
that is, wer away to his drill wi' the Royal Naval Reserves. So Dick
Yeo an' me agreed to go off together. Where he went, I was to go tu,
an' where I went, he was to come. He had two pounds put away, in gold.
I only had half a crown, an' cuden't see me way to get no more nuther.
'Casn' thee ask thy maid for some?' Dick said. I was ashamed, like, but
I did.

"'What's thee want it for?" her asked.

"'Tisn' nothing doing down here,' I says, 'an' I wants to go to sea.'

"'I an't got no money,' the maid says.

"'Casn' thee get nort?' I asks, having begun, you see. I'd been goin'
with her for nigh on two years.

"Her cried bitter at the thought o' me going, but her did get seven
shillin's from a fellow servant. I told me mother--her cried tu'--an'
off us started, going by train to Bristol and stopping the night at the
Sailor's Rest. 'Twasn't bad, you know. They Restis be gude things.
Dick, he woke in the morning wi' a swelled faace, but I didn' feel
nort.

"Dick Yeo paid both our boat fares from Bristol to Cardiff. The
steward--what us urned against aboard ship--recommended us to a lodging
house in Adelaide Street, an' he giv'd me a note for a man at the Board
o' Trade, sayin' we was Demshire fishin' chaps an' gude seamen.

"Well, us went to the lodging house an' gave in our bags an' took a
room wi' fude [food