The man sat up and began to feel his limbs, quite as though they belonged to some other body.  “No, I reckon not.”

“Then we’d best be starting.  The tide’s rising.  My house is just above here.”

He led the way along the slippery foreshore until he found what he sought, a foot-track slanting up the cliff.  Here he gave the sailor a hand and they mounted together.  On the grass slope above they met the gale and were forced to drop on their hands and knees and crawl, Taffy leading and shouting instructions, the sailor answering each with “Ay, ay, mate!” to show that he understood.

But about half-way up these answers ceased, and Taffy, looking round and calling, found himself alone.  He groped his way back for twenty yards, and found the man stretched on his face and moaning.

“I can’t . . .  I can’t!  My poor brother!  I can’t!”

Taffy knelt beside him on the soaking turf.  “Your brother?  Had you a brother on board?”

The man bowed his face again upon the turf.  Taffy, upright on both knees, heard him sobbing like a child in the roaring darkness.

“Come,” he coaxed, and putting out a hand, touched his wet hair.  “Come.”  They crept forward again, but still as he followed the sailor cried for his drowned brother, up the long slope to the ridge of the headland, where, with the light-house and warm cottage windows in view, all speech and hearing were drowned by stinging hail and the blown grit of the causeway.

Humility opened the door to them.

“Taffy!  Where have you been?”

“There has been a wreck.”

“Yes, yes—­the coast-guard is down by the light-house.  The men there saw her before she struck.  They kept signalling till it fell dark.  They had sent off before that.”

She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on the stranger.  Taffy turned and stared too.  The man’s face was running with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that they also were scarlet.

He helped the poor wretch to a chair.

“Bandages:  can you manage?” She nodded, and stepped to a cupboard.  The sailor began to wail again like an infant.

“See—­above the temple here:  the cut isn’t serious.”  Taffy took down a lantern and lit it.  The candle shone red through the smears his fingers left on the horn panes.  “I must go and help, if you can manage.”

“I can manage,” she answered quietly.

He strode out, and closing the door behind him with an effort, faced the gale again.  Down in the lee of the light-house the lamps of the coast-guard carriage gleamed foggily through the rain.  The men were there discussing, George among them.  He had just galloped up.