"I know'd it was no good follerin. Nothing foaled o mortal mare can collar that chestnut, once she's away. So I bangs my hat down, catches the old orse by the ead, and rams him down the hill for Newhaven."
He began to push at the oars again.
"For there's two roads to Birling Gap, my lad: one by land, and one by sea. We've missed him by land. Now we'll see what the Jack-tars can do."
IV
The boy said nothing. His eyes were on his ship, dim above him in the mist.
She was in rags and tatters: so much he could see, and little else. Yet to him she seemed to glow in the dusk. He saw her through blurred eyes in a cloud of glory, and his heart thrilled to her.
She was his ship; that ship of which he had dreamed ever since he could dream, this boy born to the sea.
And was he not proud of her?
Shivering like a lover, he brought up alongside; and as he did so he thrust out a hand to feel the wooden ribs which covered that heart of valour.
For was she not the little Tremendous, of whom the heroic tales were told!