“Look here, you and me and Hob’s Tommy will run round to the Tyne, and get some mussels, or else the whole place will be starved when the fine weather comes.”

A big coble was got out, and ran down to the Tyne with a northerly wind through the shrewd and vicious sea.  The men got the cargo of mussels, and at four in the afternoon prepared to beat their way northward.  It was then blowing half a gale, but the wind had shifted round from the shore, so that very little tacking was required.  As the shades fell lower and lower, the wind rose higher and higher.  The blasts galloped down through the hollows, and struck the brown sail of the coble like the sound of musketry.  The boat lay hard over, and the water leaped in spurts over her lee gunwale.  They reached the point where the Cobbler’s Stone stood.  Tommy was in a strange state of exaltation.  He pointed to the misty shore, then to the black stone round which the water was seething.  He said quietly, “Yonder, my lads!”

They rounded the point, and put the boat’s head nearer to windward.  A harsh ripping sound was heard under the bottom.  She lay hard over until a blast came and tore her clear.  Billy Armstrong said—­

“You have taken her in a bit too near, my son.  The bilge chocks is both pulled off; look you, they’re gone away astern.”  And, sure enough, two long planks drifted away behind the boat.  They had been torn off by the force with which she rushed upon the outlying rock.  Tommy said, “Let’s have another reef in, mates.”  But before the sail could be half lowered, a storming gust swept out of the bay, and struck the boat with a roar.  The long rudder smashed; a green sea doubled up behind her, and she turned over exactly as the coble had done when Tommy first prayed.

In the wild waves it was hard for the men to get hold.  The bilge chocks were gone, and thus all chance of a hand grip was lost.  Half-way down the square stern of the boat a hole had been bored, through which a rope had been passed and knotted at both ends.  This rope served the men in hauling the boat down to the sea.  Only one could hold on to this short scrap, and Tommy, who was the first to think of it, seized it, and held on with the strength of his despair.  The boat lunged and struck the faces of the two men who were holding on to her sides.  Billy Armstrong was bleeding from the mouth, and his front teeth were gone—­dashed out by one stroke which had met him as he tried to climb and catch hold of the deep iron keel in the fore part of the coble.  The other man said suddenly, “I have got a broken arm, Tommy.”  A few minutes went by, during which the men dared not speak—­only Tommy was perfectly safe.  The others were slipping and writhing in their efforts to hang on to the smooth planks.  The man with the broken arm had the nails of his sound hand torn, and the blood streamed down as he clutched again and again at the slippery seams.  At last he said, “I cannot do it any longer.