things of that kind. Snakes! If you saw a
forked tongue come out of that blue you wouldn't be surprised."

"You're getting to be quite an impressionist, Tom. The sky is horrible.
I see all our vessels are getting their boats in; we'd better follow
suit. How's the glass, skipper?" "Never saw anything like it, sir. This
night isn't over yet, and I reckon what's coming is coming from the
nor'-east. We're going to reef down. I haven't seen anything like this
since 1866, and I remember we had just such another evening."

As usual, the gulls were troubled in their minds, and wailed piercingly,
for they seem to be mercurial in temperament, and no better weather
prophets can be seen.

The two ambulance-service men went below, declining to show any
misgivings, and they had a good, desultory chat before anything happened
to call them on deck. They talked of the poor bruised fellows whom they
had seen; then of home; then of the splendid future when men would be
kinder, and no fisherman with festering wounds would ever be permitted
to die like a dog in a stinking kennel. Pleasant, honest talk it was,
for the talkers were pleasant and honest. No bad man can talk well. Our
two gentlemen had learned a long lesson of unselfishness, and each of
them seemed to become gentler and more worthy in proportion as he gave
up more and more of his comfort and his labour to serve others.

At last Ferrier said, "Well, Tom, we had a heavy turn in the autumn. If
we go this time we'll go together, and I've often wondered what that
could be like. What do men say when they meet the last together? Whew-w!
How I hate death. The monster! The beastly cold privation. To leave even
a North Sea smack must be bitter."

The patients were listening; the man with concussion was gone, cured,
and his place was held by a burly man who had tried (as heavy fellows
will) to haul his own fourteen stone up to the main-boom during a
breeze, in order to repair a reef-earring. The vessel came up to the
wind, and the jar flung poor Ebenezer Mutton clash on to the deck.
Luckily he did not land on his skull, but he had a dislocated ankle.

Ebenezer whispered, "I heern you talkin' about the gale, sir, and you're
right; we've got somethin' to come. I have a left arm that can beat any
glass ever was seen. I come down from the jaws of the gaff just when we
was snuggin' her before the gale in '66, and my arm went in four places.
Ever since then that there arm tells every change