“Who’s in her?”

“The young Squire and his lass.”

“I’ll be out directly.  Has he ever made the landin’ before?”

“Yes, but Tom’s Harry was always with him.”

When Casely stepped to the cliff edge, he saw that matters were a little awkward.  The boat was as yet in no very great danger, but the real pinch would not come till Ellington tried to land.  For two miles along the coast there was not a single yard of shore where you dared beach a boat, excepting just opposite the village.  Here there was a broad gap through the jagged reef which fringed the shore, and through this gap the fishermen’s boats had shot in fair or foul weather for more generations than men could remember.

Casely said to one of the women—­

“He’ll be all right if he comes in to the north of the Cobbler.  If he doesn’t, it’s a bad job.”

The Cobbler’s Seat was one of a pair of huge rocks, which lay right in the very gap wherethrough the boats had to run in.  A progressive people would have had the impediments blasted away, but the fisher-folk were above all things conservative, and so the Cobbler remained year after year to make the inward passage exciting.  When the tide was running in hard, a boat attempting the south passage was certain to be taken in a nasty swirling eddy, and dashed heavily against the big stone.  When any sea was on, the run in required much nicety of handling.

Ellington had been told long ago that he must keep the church tower and the flagstaff in one if he wanted to hit the gap fairly.  He carried out his instruction as well as he knew how.

The boat came dashingly in, flinging the spray gallantly aside as she ducked and plunged in the short sea.

Casely saw that Ellington was going wrong.  For an instant he had an ungenerous thought.  “Should I save him?” He shook himself as though he were shaking off water, and sang out with all the strength of his tremendous voice—­“Hard down with it!” He waved to the northward with passionate energy.  But it was too late.  The boat staggered as the eddy hit her, swerved sharp to starboard, and took in a great plash of water, then she struck the Cobbler, and kept repeating the blow with vicious, short bumps that stove in her head.  Ellington sprang out, and got a foothold.  He seized the girl, and dragged her beside him.  The boat turned clumsily over, and swirled away past.  Then the wrecked couple climbed out of reach of the lunging waves, and stood breathless.  Casely said, “That’s a bad job, Jinny.  The Cobbler’ll be covered half a fathom in forty minutes’ time.”

The woman he spoke to was his cousin.  She said, “Can he swim?”

“Him!  The big baby!  He never could do anything like a man since the day he was whelped.  Old John Ellington would have had the lass half-way ashore by this time.”

“Let him drown!” This unladylike speech came from Jinny, who had been very fond of Mary Casely.