In this way we passed the winter of 1796-7; until the lambing season, which fell midway in February.  The year opened wet, with fresh south westerly winds, which in the second week chopped suddenly; and for four days a continuous freezing gale blew on us from the N.W.  It was then that the lambs began to drop; and for three nights I exchanged pipe and fireside for a lantern and the lower corner of Friar’s Parc at the back of the towans, where the ewes were gathered in the lew.[1] They kept us so busy that for forty-eight hours we neither changed our clothes (at least, I did not) nor sat down to a meal.  The sand about Vellingey is always driving, more or less; and the gale so mixed it up with fine snow that we made our journeys to and from the house, so to speak, blindfold, and took our chance of the drifts.  But the evening of the 11th promised better.  The wind dropped, and in an hour fell to a flat calm:  then, after another hour, began to draw easily off shore—­the draught itself being less noticeable than the way in which it smoothed down the heavy sea running.  Though the cold did not lift, the weather grew tolerable once more:  and each time I crossed the townplace[2] with a lamb in my arms, I heard the surf running lower and lower in the porth below Vellingey.

By day-break (the 12th) it was fallen to nothing:  the sky still holding snow, but sky and sea the same colour; a heavy blueish grey, like steel.  I was coming over the towans, just then, with a lamb under either arm (making twelve, that night) when I happened to look seaward, and there saw a boat tossing, about a gunshot from the shore.

She was a long boat, painted white; very low in the sheer, and curved at stem and stern like a Norwegian; her stem rounded off without a transom, and scarcely bluffer than her bows.  She carried a mast, stepped right forward; but no sail.  She was full of people.  I counted five sitting, all white with snow—­one by the mast, three amidships, and one in the stern sheets, steering.  At least, he had a hand on the tiller:  but the people had given over pulling, and the boat without steerage-way was drifting broadside-on towards the shore with the set of the tide.

While I stood conning her, up at the house the back-door opened, and my brother stepped out and across the yard to milk the cows.  His milk-pails struck against the door-post, and sounded as clear as bells.  I shouted to him and pointed towards the boat:  and after looking a moment, he set down his pails and started off at a run, down towards the porth.  I then hurried towards the house, where I found Selina, our old housekeeper, in the kitchen, tending the lambs with warm milk.  Handing the new-comers over to her, I caught up a line and made off hot-foot after Obed.

At low-water (and the tide had now scarcely an hour to ebb) the sands in Vellingey Porth measure a good half-mile from the footbridge at its head to the sea at its base.  My legs were longer than Obed’s; but I dare say he had arrived five minutes ahead of me.  He was standing and calling to the boat’s crew to get out an oar and pull her head-to-sea:  for although the smoothing wind had taken most of the danger out of the breakers, they were quite able to capsize and roll over any boat that beached herself in that lubberly fashion.