They made their way under the lee of the towans to escape the stinging sand.  Within Tredinnis Gates they found a couple of pine-trees blown down across the road, and scrambled over their trunks.  Before lessons, Taffy boasted a lot of his journey to Honoria, and almost forgot to be sorry that George did not appear, though it was Wednesday.

They had no trouble in reaching home.  The gale hurled them along.  Taffy, leaning his back against it, could scarcely feel his feet touching ground.  Humility unfastened the door, looking white and anxious.  Before they could close it again, the wind swept a big dish off the dresser with a crash.

Taffy slept soundly that night.  He did not hear a knocking which sounded on the house-door, soon after eleven o’clock.  The man who knocked came from Tresedder, one of the moor farms.  “Oh, sir! did ’ee see the rockets go up over Innis?  There’ll be dead men down ’pon the Island rocks.”

Taffy slept on.  When he came downstairs next morning there was a stranger in the kitchen—­a little old man, huddled in a blanket before the great fireplace, where a line of clothes hung drying.  Humility was stooping to wedge a sand-bag under the door.  She looked up at Taffy with a wan little smile.

“There has been a wreck,” she said.

“Glory be!” exclaimed the stranger from the fire-place.

Taffy glanced at him, but could see little more than the back of a bald head above the blankets.

“Where’s the ship?” he asked.

“Gone,” answered the Vicar, coming at that moment from the inner room where his books were.  “She must have broken up in less than ten minutes after she struck the Island—­parted and gone down in six fathoms of water.”

“And the men?  Was father there?” It bewildered Taffy that all this should have happened while he was sleeping.

“There was no time to fix the rocket apparatus.  She was late in making her distress signals.  But I doubt if anything could have been done.  She went down too quickly.”

“But—­” Taffy’s gaze wandered to the bald head.

“He was washed clean over the ridge where she struck, and swept into Innis Pool—­one big wave carried him into safety—­one man out of six.”

“Hallelujah!” cried the rescued man facing round in his chair.  “Might ha’ been scat like an egg-shell, and here I be shoutin’ praises!” Taffy saw that he was a clean-shaven little fellow, with puckered cheeks and two wisps of grey hair curling forward from his ears.

Mr. Raymond frowned.  “I am sure,” said he, “you ought not to be talking so much.”

“I will sing and give praise, sir, beggin’ you pardon, with the best member that I have.  Who is weak, and I am not weak?  Who is offended and I burn not?  Hallelujah!  A-men!”

He took his basin of bread and milk from Humility’s hand, and ate by the fire.  She had wrung his clothes through fresh water, and as soon as they were thoroughly dry he retired upstairs to change.  He came back to his seat by the fire.