This was Mrs. Garstin’s story and it left me still wondering why she lived on at St. Mary’s.  I asked after her son.

“How is Leopold?  What is he—­a linen-draper?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and said: 

“That’s the St. Agnes’ lugger from the Bishop, and if we go down to the pier now we shall meet it.”

We walked down to the pier.  The first person to step on shore was Leopold, with the Trinity House buttons on his pilot coat.

“He’s the third hand on the Bishop now,” said Mrs. Garstin.  “You are surprised?” She sent Leopold into Hugh Town upon an errand, and as we walked back up the hill she said:  “Did you notice a grave underneath John’s tablet?”

“No,” said I.

“I told you there was a mention in the log of a ketch.”

“Yes.”

“The ketch went ashore on the Crebinachs at half-past four on that Christmas Eve.  One man jumped for the rocks when the ketch struck, and was drowned.  The rest were brought off by the lugger.  But one man was drowned.”

“He drowned because he jumped,” said I.

“He drowned because my man hadn’t lit the Bishop light,” said she, brushing my sophistry aside.  “So I gave my boy in his place.”

And now I knew why those words—­“There was a haze and it was growing dark”—­held the heart of her distress.

“And if the Bishop goes next winter,” she continued, “why, it will just be a life for a life;” and she choked down a sob as a young voice hailed us from behind.

But the Bishop still stands in the Atlantic, and Leopold, now the second hand, explains to the Margate trippers the wonders of the North Foreland lights.

THE CRUISE OF THE “WILLING MIND.”

The cruise happened before the steam-trawler ousted the smack from the North Sea.  A few newspapers recorded it in half-a-dozen lines of small print which nobody read.  But it became and—­though nowadays the Willing Mind rots from month to month by the quay—­remains staple talk at Gorleston ale-houses on winter nights.

The crew consisted of Weeks, three fairly competent hands, and a baker’s assistant, when the Willing Mind slipped out of Yarmouth.  Alexander Duncan, the photographer from Derby, joined the smack afterwards under peculiar circumstances.  Duncan was a timid person, but aware of his timidity.  He was quite clear that his paramount business was to be a man; and he was equally clear that he was not successful in his paramount business.  Meanwhile he pretended to be, hoping that on some miraculous day a sudden test would prove the straw man he was to have become real flesh and blood.  A visit to a surgeon and the flick of a knife quite shattered that illusion.  He went down to Yarmouth afterwards, fairly disheartened.  The test had been applied, and he had failed.

Now, Weeks was a particular friend of Duncan’s.  They had chummed together on Gorleston Quay some years before, perhaps because they were so dissimilar.  Weeks had taught Duncan to sail a boat, and had once or twice taken him for a short trip on his smack; so that the first thing that Duncan did on his arrival at Yarmouth was to take the tram to Gorleston and to make inquiries.