t these
fishermen do except one thing: I doubt I could stand the racket of my
own thoughts. Tony and John would go out to-night, to-morrow, every
night. But I have slept so dead (not from bodily tiredness) that, the
door being bolted against the children, they were unable to waken me
for dinner, and in the end Tony told them to 'let the poor beast bide.'
Of what nature was that passion, so exultant and so tiring? Are these
fishermen so used to it that they 'don't take much note o'it'? For they
feel it. I have seen it in their faces. One can always tell. The eyes
widen and brighten; hasty movements become so desperately cool. If what
was an episode in my life, is part and parcel of theirs, how much the
better for _them_!

29

To-day the sea passion, or whatever it is, came again.

While I was asleep, the wind backed and freshened. Balks of wood from a
naval target kept washing in. Balks make winter firing when coal is
dear and money scarce. Boats had been bringing them in all the morning,
till the sea became too rough. Tony had none however. In the afternoon
he complained bitterly:

"They all got some wude but me, an' us an't got enough in house for the
winter nuther." Just then we saw a large piece washing along on the
flood tide over the outside of Broken Rocks. "Get a rope--grass rope,
mind. Down with her. The _Cock Robin_! Quick. Jump aboard. Take oars.
Hurry up casn'? Get hold thic oar. Look out!"

[Sidenote: _OUT AFTER FLOTSAM_]

No time to wait for a smooth. Tony shoved the _Cock Robin_ into a surf
we should not otherwise have thought of facing. As it turned out, we
got off better than we usually do in only a moderate sea, though we
should have capsized to a certainty had the boat sheered. 'Twas, "Look
out! Damme, look out! Here's a swell coming! Get her head to it or we'm
over. Gude for us!" Some of the waves, rising and topping in the
shallow water over the rocks, seemed to make the _Cock Robin_ sit
upright on her stern, like a dog begging, and the higher the seas rose
the more we gloried in them. Sufficient for the moment was the wave
thereof. We swore at each other in a sort of chant. I had to repress an
impulse to jump overboard and swim to the balk, instead of trying to
work up to it with a boat that had, every other moment, to be turned
bows on to the sea. The slightest error of judgment on Tony's part, and
we should indeed have swum for it. I had such a curious feeling of
being _in_ the sea--as m