Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/139

Rh it up with fine snow that we made our journeys to and from the house, so to speak, blindfold, and took our chance of the drifts. But the evening of the 11th promised better. The wind dropped, and in an hour fell to a flat calm: then, after another hour, began to draw easily off shore—the draught itself being less noticeable than the way in which it smoothed down the heavy sea running. Though the cold did not lift, the weather grew tolerable once more: and each time I crossed the townplace with a lamb in my arms, I heard the surf running lower and lower in the porth below Vellingey.

By day-break (the 12th) it was fallen to nothing: the sky still holding snow, but sky and sea the same colour; a heavy blueish grey, like steel. I was coming over the towans, just then, with a lamb under either arm (making twelve, that night) when I happened to look seaward, and there saw a boat tossing, about a gunshot from the shore.

She was a long boat, painted white; very low in the sheer, and curved at stern and stern like a Norwegian; her stern rounded off without a transom, and scarcely bluffer than her bows. She carried a mast, stepped right forward; but no sail. She was full of people. I counted five sitting, all white with snow one by the mast, three amidships, and one in the stern sheets, steering. At least, he had a hand on the tiller: but the people had given over pulling, and the boat without