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Duncan was on deck when the morning broke. It broke extraordinarily slowly, a niggardly filtering of grey, sad light from the under edge of the sea. The bare topmasts of the smacks showed one after the other. Duncan watched each boat as it came into view with a keen suspense. This was a ketch, and that, and that other, for there was the peak of its reefed mainsail just visible, like a bird’s wing, and at last he saw it–the fish-cutter–lurching and rolling in the very middle of the fleet, whither she had crept up in the night. He stared at it; his belly was pinched with fear as a starveling’s with hunger; and yet he was conscious that, in a way, he would have been disappointed if it had not been there.

“No other smack is shipping its fish,” quavered a voice at his elbow. It was the voice of the baker’s assistant.

“But this smack is,” replied Weeks, and he set his mouth hard. “And, what’s more, my Willie is taking it aboard. Now, who’ll go with Willie?”

“I will.”

Weeks swung round on Duncan and stared at him. Then he stared out to sea. Then he stared again at Duncan.

“You?”

“When I shipped as a hand on the Willing Mind, I took all a hand’s risks.”

“And brought the willing mind,” said Weeks with a smile, “Go, then! Some one must go. Get the boat tackle ready, forward. Here, Willie, put your life-belt on. You, too, Duncan, though God knows life-belts won’t be of no manner of use; but they’ll save your insurance. Steady with the punt there! If it slips inboard off the rail there will be a broken back! And, Willie, don’t get under the cutter’s counter. She’ll come atop of you and smash you like an egg. I’ll drop you as close as I can to windward, and pick you up as close as I can to leeward.”

The boat was dropped into the water and loaded up with fish-boxes. Duncan and Willie Weeks took their places, and the boat slid away into a furrow. Duncan sat in the boat and rowed. Willie Weeks stood in the stern, facing him, and rowed and steered.

“Water!” said Willie every now and then, and a wave curled over the bows and hit Duncan a stunning blow on the back.

“Row,” said Willie, and Duncan rowed and rowed. His hands were ice, he sat in water ice-cold, and his body perspired beneath his oil-skins, but he rowed. Once, on the crest of a wave, Duncan looked out and saw below them the deck of a smack, and the crew looking upwards at them as though they were a horserace. “Row!” said Willie Weeks. Once, too, at the bottom of a slope down which they had bumped dizzily, Duncan again looked out, and saw the spar of a mainmast tossing just over the edge of a grey roller. “Row,” said Weeks, and a moment later, “Ship your oar!” and a rope caught him across the chest.

They were alongside the cutter.

Duncan made fast the rope.

“Push her off!” suddenly cried Willie, and grasped an oar. But he was too late. The cutter’s bulwarks swung down towards him, disappeared under water, caught the punt fairly beneath the keel and scooped it clean on to the deck, cargo and crew.

“And this is only the first trip!” said Willie.

The two following trips, however, were made without accident.

“Fifty-two boxes at two-pound-ten,” said Weeks, as the boat was swung inboard. “That’s a hundred and four, and ten two’s are twenty, and carry two, and ten fives are fifty, and two carried, and twenties into that makes twenty-six. One hundred and thirty pounds–this smack’s mine, every rope on her. I tell you what, Duncan: you’ve done me a good turn to-day, and I’ll do you another. I’ll land you at Helsund, in Denmark, and you can get clear away. All we can do now is to lie out this gale.”