' pluck. If you don't take
care, my lad, you'll get a name for being a regular soft. I believe if
one of the lads o' your own size hit you, you'd cry."

"Perhaps I should, Josh, so I hope no one will hit me."

The lad thrust back his scarlet woollen cap, and bent down over the
brown nets so that his companion should not see his face; and as he
shook down the soft meshes, with the heap growing bigger and bigger, so
did the pile of silvery pilchards grow taller, as Josh growled to
himself and shook out the fish easily enough, for though the gills of
the herring-like fish acted as barbs to complete their arrowy form as
they darted through the sea, and kept them from swimming back, the hold
on the net was very frail, and they kept falling pat, pat, upon the deck
or in the well.

"After all I've done for you I don't want you to turn out a cur,"
growled Josh at last.

"Well, was I a cur last night?" cried Will eagerly. "Mike said there
was a storm coming on, and that we'd better run in. Didn't I say,
`let's stop and shake out the fish,' as we hauled the nets?"

"Ay, but that's not very plucky," cried Josh, giving his face another
rub and placing some spangles under his right eye; "that's being
foolhardy and running risks with your craft, as no man ought to do as
has charge of a lugger and all her gear. Ah, you're a poor gallish sort
o' lad, and it's only a silly job to try and make a man of you."

It was quite early in the morning, and the sun was just showing over the
bold headland to play through the soft silvery mist that hung in patches
over the sea, which heaved and fell, ruddy orange where the sun glanced
upon the swell, and dark misty purple in the hollows. The surface was
perfectly smooth, not a breath of air coming from the land to dimple the
long gentle heaving of the ebbing tide. Here and there the dark
luggers, with their duck-shaped hulls and cinnamon-brown sails, stood
out clear in the morning sunshine; while others that had not reached the
harbour were fast to the small tub buoys; and again others that had not
heeded the warnings of the threatened storm were only now creeping in,
looking strange and mysterious, half-hidden as they were by the veil of
mist that now opened, now closed and completely blotted them from the
sight of those in the harbour.

It was a wild-looking place, the little fishing town nestling on the
cliff, with the grey granite rocks piled-up behind and spreading to east
and we