flung it overboard, letting the line run out in the stern-notch.
Not halfway had it run before he felt a long pull on it, like the
sucking of a dog-fish.

"_Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! pull me in_."

Hendry Watty pulled in hand over fist; and in came the lead
sinker over the notch, and still the line was heavy; be pulled and
he pulled, and next, all out of the dead waste of the night, came
two white hands, like a washerwoman's, and gripped hold of the
stern-board; and on the left of these two hands, on the little
finger, was a silver ring, sunk very deep in the flesh. If this was
bad, worse was the face that followed--a great white parboiled face,
with the hair and whiskers all stuck with chips of wood and seaweed.
And if this was bad for anybody, it was worse for my grandfather, who
had known Archelaus Rowett before he was drowned out on the Shivering
Grounds, six years before.

Archelaus Rowett climbed in over the stern, pulled the hook with the
bit of pipe-stem out of his cheek, sat down in the stern-sheets,
shook a small crayfish out of his whiskers, and said very coolly--

"If you should come across my wife--"

That was all my grandfather stayed to hear. At the sound of
Archelaus's voice he fetched a yell, jumped clean over the side of
the boat and swam for dear life. He swam and swam, till by the bit
of the moon he saw the Gull Rock close ahead. There were lashin's of
rats on the Gull Rock, as he knew: but he was a good deal surprised
at the way they were behaving: for they sat in a row at the water's