The captain swore, and turned southwards. For four days and nights Warrisden pitched about on the fish-carrier and learned many things, such as the real meaning of tannin in tea, and the innumerable medical uses to which "Friar's Balsam" can be put. On the morning of the fifth day the City of Bristol steamed into the middle of the fleet, and her engines stopped.
These were the days before the steam-trawler. The sailing-ships were not as yet laid up, two by two, alongside Gorleston quay, and knocked down for a song to any purchaser. Warrisden looked over a grey, savage sea. The air was thick with spindrift. The waves leaped exultingly up from windward and roared away to leeward from under the cutter's keel in a steep, uprising hill of foam. All about him the sailing-boats headed to the wind, sinking and rising in the furrows, so that Warrisden would just see a brown topsail over the edge of a steep roller like a shark's fin, and the next instant the dripping hull of the boat flung out upon a breaking crest.
"You will have to look slippy when the punt from the Perseverance comes alongside with her fish," the captain shouted. "The punt will give you a passage back to the Perseverance, but I don't think you will be able to return. There's a no'th-westerly gale blowing up, and the sea is increasing every moment. However, there will be another cutter up to-morrow, and if it's not too rough you could be put on board of her."
It took Warrisden a full minute to realise the meaning of the captain's words. He looked at the tumbling, breaking waves, he listened to the roar of the wind through the rigging.
"The boats won't come alongside to-day," he cried.
"Won't they?" the skipper replied. "Look!"
Certainly some manœuvre was in progress. The trawlers were all forming to windward in a rough semicircle about the cutter. Warrisden could see boat tackle being rigged to the main yards and men standing about the boats capsized on deck. They were actually intending to put their fish on board in the face of the storm.
"You see, with the gale blowing up, they mayn't get a chance to put their fish on board for three or four days after this," the captain explained. "Oh, you can take it from me. The No'th Sea is not a Bobby's job."
As Warrisden watched, one by one the trawlers dropped their boats, and loaded them with fish-boxes. The boats pushed off, three men to each, with their life-belts about their oil-skins, and came down with the wind towards the fish-carrier. The trawlers bore away, circled round the City of Bristol, and took up their formation to leeward, so that, having discharged their fish, the boats might drop down again with the wind to their respective ships. Warrisden watched the boats, piled up with fish-boxes, coming through the welter of the sea. It seemed some desperate race was being rowed.
"Can you tell me which is the boat from the Perseverance?" he asked.