"You must understand, mates, that he hadn't seen nothing to skeer him,
but only heard sounds, which come into his ears to make his hair rise;
and his mind might have put into them more than there was, for the want
of intarpreting. Perhaps this come across him, as soon as he felt at
a better distance with his wind short; anyhow, he brought up again'
a piece of rock-stuff in a hollow of the ground, and begun to look
skeerily backward. For a bit of a while there was nothing to distemper
him, only the dark of the hill and the trees, and the grey light
a-coming from the sea in front. But just as he were beginning for to
call himself a fool, and to pick himself onto his legs for trudging
home, he seed a thing as skeered him worse than ever, and fetched him
flat upon his lower end.

"From the black of the yew-tree there burst a big light, brighter than
a lighthouse or a blue thunder-bolt, and flying with a long streak down
the hollow, just as if all the world was a-blazing. Three times it come,
with three different colours, first blue, and then white, and then
red as new blood; and poor Bob was in a condition of mind must be seen
before saying more of it. If he had been brought up to follow the sea,
instead of the shoemaking, maybe his wits would have been more about
him, and the narves of his symptom more ship-shape. But it never was
borne into his mind whatever, to keep a lookout upon the offing, nor
even to lie snug in the ferns and watch the yew-tree. All he was up
for was to make all sail, the moment his sticks would carry it; and he
feared to go nigh his sweetheart any more, till she took up with another
fellow."

"And sarve him quite right," was the judgment of the room, in high
fettle with hot rum and water; "to be skeered of his life by a
smuggler's signal! Eh, Cappen Zebedee, you know that were it?"