A cloudless day, sea of deepest blue, without even the faintest cat’s-paw to wrinkle its shining face; a morning warm, genial, windless, reminiscent of fairest summer, such a day as landsmen rejoice in, feeling that it is good to be alive.  But the glass came tumbling down, the sea heaved sullenly in the oily calm, seething around the bared fangs of jagged rocks, drawing back with threatening snarl or snatching irritably at the trailing sea-weed; and high aloft the gulls wheeled, clamouring.  Old men amongst the fishers looked askance.  Why did they not take warning?  Alas!  The year had been a lean year; the weather latterly had been bad, and for near on a week the boats had been unable to go out.  The fish were there for the taking.  Prices now were good.  And “men must work” even if “women must weep.”  So it befell that boat after boat put out from harbour and headed over the windless sea, dragged, galley-like, by the clumsy sweeps, till, clear of the land, the fanning of a light air from the south-west gave her gentle steerage way.  Soon not a boat was left in port; even those whose weather-wise “skeely” old skippers had counselled caution, at length, against their will and better judgment, were shamed into starting.  After all, it was no great distance they were going; with ordinary luck they might be back before much wind came.  And if the worst came to the worst and they were caught out at sea, why, the boats were weatherly craft, manned by the best of seamen, and an hour or two at the most would see them fight their way back to port.  It was all in the day’s work.  Nothing venture, nothing win.  If one may take a risk, so may another.  It does not do to stand idle in the background whilst one’s neighbour by superior daring secures the prize we also sorely need.

So by 9 A.M. the last boat of the five and forty had got to sea.  Before midday all had made an offing of eight or ten miles, and had started to shoot their lines.  Folk who had watched them creep out of the harbour now gave no further heed, save perhaps that wives may chance to have cast anxious looks seaward now and again.  But none dreamt of evil.

Then of a sudden, as the morning passed, some on shore became aware of a strange, death-like stillness that had fallen over all things, a feeling of gloom and oppression in the air.  The sun indeed still shone unclouded over the land, but away out at sea to the north-east there was a horrible canker of blackness that was eating up the sky, and that already had hid from sight, as by a wall, those boats that lay farthest from the land, whilst those still visible could be seen hurriedly letting everything go by the run.  Then the blackness shut down over all, and men could but guess what was going on behind that terrible veil.  Over the town, as people deserted their houses and hurried to cliff or sea wall, or wherever there seemed possibility of gaining sight or knowledge of the fleet, the same horror of darkness came rushing; wind raved