“Then we’d best be starting. The tide’s rising. My house is just above here.”
He led the way along the slippery foreshore until he found what he sought, a foot-track slanting up the cliff. Here he gave the sailor a hand and they mounted together. On the grass slope above they met the gale and were forced to drop on their hands and knees and crawl, Taffy leading and shouting instructions, the sailor answering each with “Ay, ay, mate!” to show that he understood.
But about half-way up these answers ceased, and Taffy, looking round and calling, found himself alone. He groped his way back for twenty yards, and found the man stretched on his face and moaning.
“I can’t... I can’t! My poor brother! I can’t!”
Taffy knelt beside him on the soaking turf. “Your brother? Had you a brother on board?”
The man bowed his face again upon the turf. Taffy, upright on both knees, heard him sobbing like a child in the roaring darkness.
“Come,” he coaxed, and putting out a hand, touched his wet hair. “Come.” They crept forward again, but still as he followed the sailor cried for his drowned brother, up the long slope to the ridge of the headland, where, with the light-house and warm cottage windows in view, all speech and hearing were drowned by stinging hail and the blown grit of the causeway.
Humility opened the door to them.
“Taffy! Where have you been?”
“There has been a wreck.”