edge and fished, with their tails let down into the sea for
fishing-lines: and their eyes were like garnets burning as they
looked at my grandfather over their shoulders.

"Hendry Watty! Hendry Watty! You can't land here--you're disturbing
the pollack."

"Bejimbers! I wouldn' do that for the world," says my grandfather: so
off he pushes and swims for the mainland. This was a long job, and
'twas as much as he could do to reach Kibberick beach, where he fell
on his face and hands among the stones, and there lay, taking breath.

The breath was hardly back in his body, before he heard footsteps,
and along the beach came a woman, and passed close by to him. He lay
very quiet, and as she came near he saw 'twas Sarah Rowett, that used
to be Archelaus's wife, but had married another man since. She was
knitting as she went by, and did not seem to notice my grandfather:
but he heard her say to herself, "The hour is come, and the man is
come."

He had scarcely begun to wonder over this, when he spied a ball of
worsted yarn beside him that Sarah had dropped. 'Twas the ball she
was knitting from, and a line of worsted stretched after her along
the beach. Hendry Watty picked up the ball and followed the thread
on tiptoe. In less than a minute he came near enough to watch what
she was doing: and what she did was worth watching. First she
gathered wreckwood and straw, and struck flint over touchwood and
teened a fire. Then she unravelled her knitting: twisted her end of
the yarn between finger and thumb--like a cobbler twisting a
wax-end--and cast the end up towards the sky. It made Hendry Watty