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Year after year the friends lived their silent life, dividing their time between fishing, poaching, and drinking. Sometimes a spell of bad weather came, and all day long the spray flew over the cottages and the cold breeze covered the sand with foam. The waters roared drearily, and the nights were bad enough to prevent the most inveterate poacher from turning out. During the daytime Lance and Roughit would lounge on the rock-tops, and look grimly out at the horizon, where the grey clouds laid their shoulders to the sea. Their companionship was much like that of lower animals: it was quite sufficient for one to know that the other was near. They did once separate for a short time, Roughit shipped in a merchant brig that was going round to Plymouth. The vessel made the run in about a week; but Roughit felt very wretched during the whole time, without knowing exactly why. At Plymouth he deserted, leaving his box behind him, and set off on foot northwards.

One evening Lance was sitting sulkily on the ground, when he saw a man crossing the moor. A vague curiosity caused him to walk out to meet the stranger, and presently Roughit came up looking very dirty, and wearing only an old sleeved waistcoat and a ragged pair of canvas trousers. He was barefooted too, and limped a good deal. The two men simply nodded and turned back to the village together. Neither of them asked any questions, but they sat drinking until a late hour, and went home less steadily than might have been wished. The people in the Row took but little notice of this eccentric couple; for, after all, the friends did harm to nothing except the Squire’s ground-game.

When the two men were growing grizzled with advancing years the coble which belonged to them had gone away from the fishing-ground one black night, before a strong north-easterly gale: she shot between the Great Farne Island and the Bird’s Rock. The tide was going like a millrace, and the solemn roar of the vast stream made very terrible music in the dark. The men might have got into their own haven by an easy passage, despite the gale. But both of them seemed to be always possessed by a gloomy kind of recklessness, and when they made the village lights they determined upon trying an entrance which was desperately difficult. In the centre of a gap which was twenty feet wide stood a rock which was known as “The Tailor’s Needle.” It stood 400 yards south of “The Cobbler.” This rock was clad in sea-weed around its base; but eight feet of the upper part of it was bare of weeds and covered only with tiny shells which tore the hands. On the top of the rock was a very small platform of about one foot square, and in fine weather daring boys would stand upright on this summit and wave to the people ashore. The rock was covered two feet by an ordinary spring tide; but on the night when Roughit and Lance decided to try and pass it, about a foot was above water. There was not a great deal of sea on; indeed, there was hardly more than what the fishermen call a “northerly lipper;” but the tide was running with extraordinary swiftness. Roughit put the helm down and guessed at his bearings. The boat lay hard down and tore in through the gap. There was a long grinding crash; the weather-side lifted clean out of the water; she dropped off the rock, and the two men were pitched overboard. Roughit scrambled to the top, at the expense of torn hands. He hung on as well as he could; but the spray from the combings of the seas cut his face and blinded him. Still, he could easily have held on till dawn, because the tide had no further to rise. He, like too many of the fishermen, could not swim. He got hold of the edge of the rock. There was not room for him on the ledge; so presently he said, “I am going.” Roughit answered: “No, don’t do that; let me give you a haul up here.” As Lance went up on one side Roughit went off on the other. The waves buffeted him away towards the shore, and he cried out “Good-night!” when he had swum a few yards westward.

At dawn Lance was picked off “The Tailor’s Needle,” but Roughit was found dead on the sand. Lance never forgave himself for having taken his comrade’s offer; he disliked the village, he hated the sea; and before long he went away inland to work down in the pits.