nt. He spits at his feet and contemplates the sea, as though he
had heard nothing.

The visitor came up, followed reluctantly by his wife. "Are you Yeo?
How are you, Yeo? What about a sail? I want you to take us round to
Pebblecombe."

That village is over the bar and across the bay. Yeo looked at the man,
and shook his head.

"Why not?" asked the visitor sharply, as though he were addressing the
reluctance of the driver of his own car.

The sailor pointed a stern finger seawards, to where the bar is shown
in charts, but where all we could make out was the flashing of
inconstant white lines.

"Well?" questioned the man, who glanced out there perfunctorily. "What
of it?"

"Look at it," mildly insisted the sailor, speaking for the first time.
"Isn't the sea like a wall?" The man's wife, who was regarding Yeo's
placid face with melancholy attention, turned to her husband and placed
a hand of nervous deprecation on his arm. He did not look at her.

"Oh, of course, if you don't want to go, if you don't want to go...."
said the visitor, shaking his head as though at rubbish, and rising
several times on his toes. "Perhaps you've a better job," he added,
with an unpleasant smile.

"I'm ready to go if you are, sir," said Yeo, "but I shall have to take
my friend with me." The sailor nodded my way.

The man did not look at me. I was not there to him. He gave an
impatient jerk to his head. "Ready to go? Of course I'm ready to go! Of
course. Why do you suppose I asked?"

Yeo went indoors, came out with a bundle of tarpaulins for us, and
began moving with deliberation along to the _Mona_. Something was said
by the woman behind us, but so quietly I did not catch it. Her husband
made confident noises of amusement, and replied in French that it was
always the way with these local folk--always the way. The result, I
gathered, of a slow life, though that was hardly the way he put it.
Nothing in it, she could be sure. These difficulties were made to raise
the price. The morning was beautiful. Still, if she did not want to go
... if she did not want to go. And his tone was that perhaps she would
be as absurd as that. I heard no more, and both followed us.

I got out to the _Mona_, cast off her stern mooring, got in the anchor,
and the pull on that brought us to the stone steps of the
landing-stage. While I made the seats ready for the voyagers and handed
them in, Yeo took two reefs in the lug-sail (an act which seemed, I
must