“I’ll be bound they’ve run for ——­ port long ago, darlings, so don’t cry now, Jane; the old craft’s stood many a stronger breeze than this; now, wipe your eyes, there.  Poor things,” he said, turning to me, as the children went farther on the pier, “their two brothers are the only friends they have got in the world, and if they are gone who is to take care of them?  Their father, old Sam Clovelly, was lost—­I recollect the time well—­somewhere off Milford; leaving his wife, with two stiff tidy bits of lads, and likely to increase the family; well, sir, she took to her bed, with the shock, and never rose from it more, after giving birth to these two little girls, leaving poor Sam and Arthur to struggle on like a cutter in a heavy sea.  But God Almighty never deserts the innocent, sir—­you’ve seen that, I dare say?  Sam’s been a steady lad, and has prospered, and he and Arthur have never forgotten their mother’s dying words, and have been very kind to their sisters; but, come what will, the orphans shall never want a friend as long as Charley Helston has a home or a bit of bread to offer them.”

We now again reverted to the state of the day.  As the gale swept on, numberless craft were running along the coast towards ——­ port, for shelter.  A crack Fowey-man now making a board till she “eat out” of the wind a North-countryman right ahead—­now with her helm-a-lea, and now careering along with a heavy following sea on either quarter—­kept our attention on the alert.  Presently a steamer came in sight bearing up across the bay towards ——­ Head.  The white rush of steam from her safety-valves was well made out by the blackness of the windward horizon; and contrasted with the dense puffs of smoke from her funnel, which were instantly dispersed or carried in heavy patches to leeward.  The glory of modern discoveries is unpopular with our coasting-seamen, and the mate of a coaster, who was watching her movements, observed that “we should not have a lad fit to hand a sail or man a yard soon with their cursed machinery.”

As she passed on her course “cleaving blast and breaker right ahead,” with her weather-wheel often spinning in the air, and as the sky darkened and the waves roared louder, I thought with deep interest on what might even now be the fate of those, without whose friendly aid I should have been lying on a rocky pillow and seaweed for my shroud, near Dawlish’s Hole.  The weather now became entitled to the formidable name of a storm, but some time had yet to elapse before darkness added its horrors to the scene of desolation.

Heavy masses of breakers were continually striking the pier-head with fearful crashes; now bursting over, amid seas of spray, with resistless impetuosity, drenching every one under its lee; now recoiling for a brief moment, as if to gather strength, leaving a smooth, hollow waste of oily sea—­like the treacherous pauses of human passion,—­and then returning with wilder haste and tenfold added fury to the onset.