t.

A third time we shot nets, safely to the east of every other craft.
Then John with his legs in a sack and a fearnought jacket round him,
snored in the cutty, whilst Tony nodded sleepily outside. The sky
eastwards had already in it the weird whitish light of the coming moon.
The risen wind was piping out from land. I could see the bobbing lights
of the other drifters to westward, and the glint of the Seacombe lamps
on the water. Every now and then a broken wave came up to the boat with
a confidential hiss. I had a constant impression that out of the dark
flood some great voice was going to speak to me--speak quite softly.

"Shall us hot some more tea?" said Tony. "My feet be dead wi' cold."

We took the old fish-box and placed on the pebbles in it an old
saucepan half full of oakum soaked in paraffin. Across the saucepan we
ledged a sooty swivel, and on the swivel a black tin kettle which
leaked slowly into the flame. Tony and myself lay with our four feet
cocked along the edge of the box for warmth. The smoke stank in our
nostrils, but the flame was cheery. By that flickering light the boat
looked a great deep place, full of lumber and the blackest shadows. The
herring scales glittered and the worn-out varnish was like rich brown
velvet. And how good the tea, though it tasted of nothing but sugar,
smoke, paraffin and herring.

[Sidenote: _A LONG NIGHT AT SEA_]

It was nearly midnight. Tony suggested forty winks.

John was still sprawling beneath the cutty. Tony and I snoozed under
the mainsail, huddled up together for the sake of warmth, like animals
in a nest. At intervals we got up to peep over the gunwale or to bale
the boat out. Then with comic sighs we coiled down together again. It
was bitterly cold in the small hours. We pooled our vitality, as it
were, and shared and shared alike. When we finally awoke, about five in
the morning, the wind had died down, the sky and moon were clouded, and
a dull mist was creeping over the sea.

We hauled in the net--fathoms of it for scarcely a fish.

"Have 'ee got anything to eat?" asked Tony.

"No."

"Have yu got ort to drink?" asked John.

"No."

"Got a cigarette?" I asked.

"Not one."

"If we was to go a bit farther out and shute...." said Tony.

"G'out! Hould yer row!"

"All very well for yu. Yu been sleeping there for all the world like a
gert duncow [dog-fish]. Why didn' 'ee wake up an' hae a yarn for to
keep things merry like?"

[Sidenote: _NORT