ere we'm going, or where we've
been, don't yu tell 'em. Don't want none o' they treble-X-ers on our
ground. You say like ol' Pussey Pengelly used to: 'Down to Longo.' I
don't hae nobody 'long wi' me what can't keep a quiet tongue.--I can
see some o' they hellers down there now, but they ain't so far west as
we'm going, not by a long way. An' yu wuden' see 'em where they be if
they didn't think 'twas going to be a quiet night with not much pulling
attached to it. But _I_ shuden' be surprised to see a breeze down
easterly 'fore morning. Don't du to get caught down to Longo be an
easterly breeze. Lord, the pulls I've a-had to get home 'fore now!"

[Sidenote: _THE HIGH-TIDE WAVES_]

A very old-fashioned figure Uncle Jake looked, standing up in the
stern-sheets and bending rhythmically, sweep and jerk, sweep and jerk,
to his long oar, as if there were wires inside him. His grey
picture-frame beard seems to have the effect of concentrating the
expressiveness of his face, the satiric glint of his eyes, the dry
smile, the straightness of his shaven upper lip, and the kindly
lighting-up of the whole visage when he calls to the sea-gulls and they
answer him back, and he says with the delight of a child, "There! Did
'ee hear thic?" Keeping close along shore in order to avoid the
strength of the flood tide against us, we rode with a perfection of
motion on the heave of the breaking swell. As we were passing over the
inside of Broken Rocks, three waves ran far up the beach. "Did 'ee hear
thic rattle?" Uncle Jake exclaimed. "That was the high-tide wave, then,
whatever the tide-tables say. Yu'll hear the low tide t'night if yu
listens."

Once I backed the boat ashore for Uncle Jake to go and look at one of
the numerous holes under the cliffs, in every one of which he has
wreckage stored up for firewood against the winter. He can at least
depend on having warmth. When he is nowhere to be found, he is a as a
rule down-shore carrying jetsam into caves. Much of it he gives away
for no other payment than the privilege of talking sarcastically at
those who don't trouble to go and of blazing forth at them when they
do.

The November sun went down while we rowed, an almost imperceptible
fading of daylight into delicate thin colours and finally into a shiny
grey half-light. More and more the cliffs lowered above us. They lost
their redness except where a glint of the sun burned splendidly upon
them; coloured shadows, as it were, came to l