of the wind, the great
thuds of solid green wave on the deck, the horrid rush and roaring of
the seas as they broke loose to leeward from under the smack's keel.
And he listened to something more--the whimpering of the baker's
assistant in the next bunk. "Three inches of deck! What's the use
of it! Lord ha' mercy on me, what's the use of it? No more than an
eggshell! We'll be broken in afore morning, broken in like a man's
skull under a bludgeon.... I'm no sailor, I'm not; I'm a baker. It
isn't right I should die at sea!"

Duncan stopped his ears, and thought of the journey some one would
have to make to the fish-cutter in the morning. There were fifty-two
boxes of soles to be put aboard.

He remembered the waves and the swirl of foam upon their crests and
the wind. Two men would be needed to row the boat, and the boat must
make three trips. The skipper and the first hand had been on deck all
night. There remained four, or rather three, for the baker's assistant
had ceased to count--Willie Weeks, Deakin, and himself, not a great
number to choose from. He felt that he was within an ace of a panic,
and not so far, after all, from that whimperer his neighbour. Two men
to row the boat--two men! His hands clutched at the iron bar of his
hammock; he closed his eyes tight; but the words were thundered out at
him overhead, in the whistle of the wind, and slashed at him by the
water against the planks at his side. He found that his lips were
framing excuses.

Duncan was on deck when the morning broke. It broke extraordinarily
slowly, a niggardly filtering of grey, sad light from the under edge
of the sea. The bare topmasts of the smacks showed one after the
other. Duncan watched each boat as it came into view with a keen
suspense. This was a ketch, and that, and that other, for there was
the peak of its reefed mainsail just visible, like a bird's wing, and
at last he saw it--the fish-cutter--lurching and rolling in the very
middle of the fleet, whither she had crept up in the night. He stared
at it; his belly was pinched with fear as a starveling's with
hunger; and yet he was conscious that, in a way, he would have been
disappointed if it had not been there.

"No other smack is shipping its fish," quavered a voice at his elbow.
It was the voice of the baker's assistant.

"But this smack is," replied Weeks, and he set his mouth hard. "And,
what's more, my Willie is taking it aboard. Now, who'll go with
Willie?"

"I will