ht, so that as Mrs Marion had gone
up to lie down after dinner, according to custom, and the old purser was
in the little summer-house having his after-dinner pipe, as he called
it, one which he invariably enjoyed without lighting the tobacco and
with a handkerchief over his head, Will was at liberty to go out
unquestioned. Accordingly he hurried down to the harbour, where the
tide was out, the gulls were squealing and wailing, and apparently
playing a miniature game of King of the Castle upon a little bit of
black rock which appeared above the sea a couple of hundred yards out.

In the harbour the water was so low that the _Pretty Ruth_, Abram
Marion's lugger--named, for some reason that no one could see, after the
old man's wife--was lying over nearly on her beam-ends, so that, as Josh
Helston, who was on board, went to and fro along the deck with a swab in
his hands it was impossible to help thinking that if nature had made his
legs like his arms, one very much shorter than the other, he would have
found locomotion far easier.

As it was, he had to walk with one knee very much, bent, so greatly was
the deck inclined; but it did not trouble him, his feet being bare and
his toes spreading out widely and sticking to the clean narrow planks as
if they were, like the cuttle-fish, provided with suckers.

Josh was swabbing away at the clinging fish-scales and singing in a
sweet musical voice an old west-country ditty in which a lady was
upbraiding someone for trying "to persuade a maiden to forsake the
jacket blue," of course the blue jacket containing some smart young
sailor.

"Hi, Josh!"

"Oh, it's you, is it?" said Josh, rubbing his nose with the mop handle.
"No, I'm busy. I sha'n't come."

"Yes, do come, Josh," said Will, crossing three or four luggers and
sitting on the rail of the _Pretty Ruth_.

"What's the good, lad?"

"Good, Josh? Why, I've told you before. I can't bear this life."

"Fisherman's a good honest life," said Josh sententiously.

"Not when a lad feels that he's a dependant and a burden on his
friends," cried Will excitedly. "I want to get on, Josh. I want to
succeed, and--there, I knew you'd come."

For Josh had thrown away the mop with an angry movement, and then
dragging on a pair of great blue stockings he put on shoes and followed
Will without a word.

Out along the beach and away from the village, and in and out among the
rocks for quite two miles, till they were where the clif