“No!  I never count syllables.  I only go by accents.”

“Um!  Well.  I shall meet you again, and you shall come and see me.”

All that winter I was secluded.  Day after day broke with wild weather.  Sometimes the snow came and laid all the bracken under its gentle coverlid.  Sometimes the wind came in from the sea, and as the mad squalls tore off the crests of the breakers, our cottage was smothered with yellow foam.  I liked to go along to the wooden hut and sit with my young friend, although the tramp back in the chill darkness was not always very safe.  He used also to visit me, and I lent him books.  He was much taken with Burke, and would talk with a solemn enthusiasm when I encouraged him to speak about the American war and the Revolution.  He began to try prose writing during this same winter, and I sometimes read his attempts.  After he had shown me some quiet fragments, describing his own daily work, I advised him not to trouble himself with verse any more, and he went on imitating his favourite prose writers with curious persistence.

February came in, bringing worse weather than ever.  One night the wind rose so that by nine o’clock it was hardly possible to stand in the open.  The sky was like iron, and the dull red which had appeared in the West at sundown changed to a cold, neutral dimness.  The birds were in great trouble, the gulls especially wailing with a peevish sharpness that made the skin creep.  I looked out twice into the roaring darkness, and could see nothing except the flash of the “white horses” as they trampled and reared far out at sea.  The fire was better than that wild company, so I sat a little, and then slept.  A loud knocking awaked me, and, going to the door, I found that the dawn had come, and that my young friend was there.

“What is the matter?”

“Get dressed, sir.  There’s bad work coming, the gale’s worse, and there’s a brig trying to work north.  He’ll never get round the point.  You go nor’ard and rouse the Hundalee men, and I’ll go south and rouse the chaps at the Bay.  Good-bye.”

When I got out the wind hit me so that I had to turn and gasp a second for breath.  It seemed as though the sea were going to invade the land.  There was not a vestige of black or green water for half a mile from the beach.  Nothing but wild masses of angry whiteness coiling and winding and shivering themselves against each other.  Twice the wind stopped me as I fought my way north, and once I had fairly to lie down in a hollow until a shrieking blast gave me leave to step on.  But I got to the village and told the men, and a dozen strong fellows went back with me.  There was no lifeboat within eight miles, so we harnessed two horses to a pair of the ordinary wheels used to launch herring-boats after the winter is over, and we took one of the smaller sort of trouting-boats with us.

When we reached the Point the men from the south were there, and my young friend was among them.  All were excited, for the brig was fighting her way still through the awful sea.  She would not bear enough sail to steady her in the least, and she could only claw her way inch by inch to the north-east.