"There she is!" he cried.

"Yes, that's the gun-boat," answered Weeks. "We can laugh at her with
this wind."

He put his smack about, and before the gun-boat puffed round the
headland, three miles away, was reaching northwards with his sails
free. He rejoined the fleet that afternoon. "Fifty-two boxes of
soles!" said Weeks. "And every one of them worth two-pound-ten in
Billingsgate Market. This smack's mine!" and he stamped on the deck in
all the pride of ownership. "We'll take a reef in," he added. "There's
a no'th-easterly gale blowin' up and I don't know anything worse in
the No'th Sea. The sea piles in upon you from Newfoundland, piles in
till it strikes the banks. Then it breaks. You were right, Upton;
we'll be lying hove-to in the morning."

They were lying hove-to before the morning. Duncan, tossing about
in his canvas cot, heard the skipper stamping overhead, and in an
interval of the wind caught a snatch of song bawled out in a high
voice. The song was not reassuring, for the two lines which Duncan
caught ran as follows--

You never can tell when your death-bells are ringing,
Your never can know when you're going to die.

Duncan tumbled on to the floor, fell about the cabin as he pulled
on his sea-boots and climbed up the companion. He clung to the
mizzen-runners in a night of extraordinary blackness. To port and to
starboard the lights of the smacks rose on the crests and sank in the