ats 'll be washed away. Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Sea's
making. Oughtn't to ha' left they boats...."

"Be quiet! yu'll wake all the kids up."

"Blowing a hurricane 'tis! Nort to me if the boats du wash off. Tony'd
never wake."

"All right, I'll wake him."

In five minutes we were downstairs, with the fire lighted and the
kettle on.

Outside, it was pitch dark. There was nothing there, it seemed, except
a savage wind and stinging splotches of rain and the cry of the low
tide on the sand. I felt my way up the Gut and out, sliding one foot
before the other so as not to fall over the sea-wall. John Widger
bumped into me, and together we crept along to the capstan. A white
shadow of surf was just visible. We dropped gingerly off the wall to
the beach, trusting there was no iron gear there to smash our ankles.
Then for an hour we fumbled our way about; pushed, hauled,
disentangled, slid and swore; grasping sometimes the right rope and
sometimes the wrong one with hands almost too cold and stiff, too
painful, to grasp anything at all.

Out of the blackness came another hurricane squall with rain that
lashed. The rushing air itself shook. We crouched, all humped up, in
the lew of a drifter's bows, whilst the rain water washed around our
boots and coat-tails. "This 'll tell 'ee what 'tis like for us chaps,"
said Tony. "I be only sorry," Uncle Jake added, "for them what's out to
sea now in ships wi' rotten gear."

[Sidenote: _A DISCOLOURED FURY_]

As the dawn broke thick, the sea rose still further, until it was a
discoloured fury battering the shore. With Uncle Jake I watched some
long planks, four inches in thickness and ten broad, swept off the top
of the beach. We saw them hurtled over Broken Rocks, now dashed against
the cliff, now careering, so to speak, on their hind legs. Such were
their mad capers that we laughed aloud. We were far from wishing to
save them. We rejoiced with them.

As the day blew on, the wind moderated inshore and the lop gathered
itself together into a heavy swell. And after dark, at half tide, Uncle
Jake and myself worked hard. We dragged the heavy planks from a surf
that seemed ever advancing on us to drive us towards the cliffs, yet
never did, and we propped up the planks against cliffs whose crumbling
drove us constantly down to the sea. There's a winter's firing there.

We talked--out-howling the noise jerkily--of wrecks and wreckages. Had
we had the chance, we might then conceivably