over their shoulders.

"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! You can't land here--you're disturbing
the pollack."

"Bejimbers! I wouldn' do that for the world," says my grandfather: so
off he pushes and swims for the mainland. This was a long job, and
'twas as much as he could do to reach Kibberick beach, where he fell
on his face and hands among the stones, and there lay, taking breath.

The breath was hardly back in his body, before he heard footsteps,
and along the beach came a woman, and passed close by to him. He lay
very quiet, and as she came near he saw 'twas Sarah Rowett, that used
to be Archelaus's wife, but had married another man since. She was
knitting as she went by, and did not seem to notice my grandfather:
but he heard her say to herself, "The hour is come, and the man is
come."

He had scarcely begun to wonder over this, when he spied a ball of
worsted yarn beside him that Sarah had dropped. 'Twas the ball she
was knitting from, and a line of worsted stretched after her along
the beach. Hendry Watty picked up the ball and followed the thread
on tiptoe. In less than a minute he came near enough to watch what
she was doing: and what she did was worth watching. First she
gathered wreckwood and straw, and struck flint over touchwood and
teened a fire. Then she unravelled her knitting: twisted her end of
the yarn between finger and thumb--like a cobbler twisting a
wax-end--and cast the end up towards the sky. It made Hendry Watty
stare when the thread, instead of falling back to the ground,
remained hanging, just as if 'twas fastened to something up above;
but it made him stare more when Sarah Rowett began to climb up it,
and away up till nothing could be seen of her but her ankles dangling
out of the dead waste and middle of the night.

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY!"

It wasn't Sarah calling, but a voice far away out to sea.

"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! _send me a line_."

My grandfather was wondering what to do, when Sarah speaks down very
sharp to him, out of the dark:

"Hendry Watty! Where's the rocket apparatus? Can't you hear the
poor fellow asking for a line?"

"I do," says my grandfather, who was beginning to lose his temper;
"and do you think, ma'am, that I carry a Boxer's rocket in my
trousers pocket?"

"I think you have a ball of worsted in your hand," says she.
"Throw it as far as you can."

So my grandfather threw the ball out into the dead waste and middle
of the night.