ife in the high earthern
flanks, lifted themselves off, and floated away into the sunset, until
the land stood against and above the sea, black and naked, crowned with
distorted thorn bushes. Very serene was the sky, but a little hard.
"Wind down east t'morrow," Uncle Jake repeated. We passed Refuge Cove,
over Dog Tooth Ledge, and along Landlock Bay. We tossed over the Brandy
Mull, a great round pit in a reef, where even in calm weather the tide
boils always. No further were there any beaches. The sea washed to the
sheer cliffs through tumbled heaps of rocks. "_'Tis_ an ironbound
shop!" said Uncle Jake. "Poor fellows, that gets wrecked hereabout! I
knows for some copper bolts when they rots out o' the wreck where they
be."

We had rowed down to Longo on the calm sea; we were on the sea, almost
in it, in so small a boat; and shorewards were the tide-swirls, the
jagged rocks, the high black cliffs. The relation of sea and land was
become reversed for us. The sea was no longer a thirsty menace, an
unknown waste. It was the land, the rocks and the cliffs, which
threatened hungrily. Night-fears, had there been any, would surely have
sprung out from the land.

[Sidenote: _A COD'S HEAD_]

We rowed into a bay whose wide-spreading arms were like an amphitheatre
of shadows.

"Take thees yer oar," said Uncle Jake. "Wer's thic cod's head?"

Everywhere in the boat, to judge by one's nose. He found it, hacked it,
then beat it with a pebble, and hacked again, and tore. From it came
two awful separate smells--one like that of a dissecting room, the
other like bad crab's inside, or like fearfully perverted cocoa, just
wetted--a sort of granulated stink that stopped one's breath. Beautiful
bait!

"Now then, while I fixes the bait between the thirts," said Uncle Jake,
"yu paddle westward. Keep 'en straight, else if a bit of a breeze
comes, us'll never find the buoys." While I rowed very slowly, he flung
overboard first a buoy and then its net, a buoy and its net, till he
had hove the whole sixteen with about four boat's lengths between each.
The _plop_ was echoed from the cliff, and as the nets sank the sea-fire
glittered green upon them. He drew on a ragged pair of oilskin
trousers, stationed himself on the starboard side of the stern-sheets,
and grasped the longer tiller. On account of the ebb tide and
consequent lay of the corks, we worked back, in reverse order,
eastwards. It was for me to row the boat up until the bow was jus