89

X. PRISONERS 99

XI. THE BOMBARDMENT 110

XII. FREE 120

XIII. AMONG FRIENDS 131

XIV. A SET OF RASCALS 143

XV. A THREATENING SKY 153

XVI. OLD JOE'S YARN 163

XVII. IN DANGEROUS SEAS 180

XVIII. A CYCLONE 191

XIX. CAST ASHORE 201

A CHAPTER OF ADVENTURES

CHAPTER I

A FISHING VILLAGE

OF the tens of thousands of excursionists who every summer travel down
by rail to Southend, there are few indeed who stop at Leigh, or who,
once at Southend, take the trouble to walk three miles along the shore
to the fishing village. It may be doubted, indeed, whether along the
whole stretch of coastline from Plymouth to Yarmouth there is a village
that has been so completely overlooked by the world. Other places,
without a tithe of its beauty of position, or the attraction afforded by
its unrivalled view over the Thames, from Gravesend to Warden Point,
ever alive with ships passing up and down, have grown from fishing
hamlets to fashionable watering-places; while Leigh remains, or at any
rate remained at the time this story opens, ten years ago, as unchanged
and unaltered as if, instead of being but an hour's run from London, it
lay far north in Scotland.

Its hill rises steeply behind it; there is room only for the street
between the railway and the wharves, and for a single row of houses
between the line and the foot of the hill. To get into Leigh from the
country round it is necessary to descend by a steep road that winds down
from the church at the top of the hill; to get out again you must go by
the same way. The population is composed solely of fishermen, their
families, and the shopkeepers who supply their necessities. The men who
stand in groups in the street and on the wharf are all clad in blue
guernseys or duck smocks and trousers of pilot cloth or canvas.
Broad-built sturdy men are they, for in point of physique there are few
fishermen round the coast who can compare with those of Leigh.

A stranger in the place would think that the male population had nothing
to do but to stand in the street and talk, but night is for the most
part their time for work; although many of the bawleys go out on the
day-tide also, for at Leigh