The breath was hardly back in his body, before he heard footsteps, and along the beach came a woman, and passed close by to him. He lay very quiet, and as she came near he saw 'twas Sarah Rowett, that used to be Archelaus's wife, but had married another man since. She was knitting as she went by, and did not seem to notice my grandfather: but he heard her say to herself, "The hour is come, and the man is come."
He had scarcely begun to wonder over this, when he spied a ball of worsted yarn beside him that Sarah had dropped. 'Twas the ball she was knitting from, and a line of worsted stretched after her along the beach. Hendry Watty picked up the ball and followed the thread on tiptoe. In less than a minute he came near enough to watch what she was doing: and what she did was worth watching. First she gathered wreckwood and straw, and struck flint over touchwood and teened a fire. Then she unravelled her knitting: twisted her end of the yarn between finger and thumb—like a cobbler twisting a wax-end—and cast the end up towards the sky. It made Hendry Watty stare when the thread, instead of falling back to the ground, remained hanging, just as if 'twas fastened to something up above; but it made him stare more when Sarah Rowett began to climb up it, and away up till nothing could be seen of her but her ankles dangling out of the dead waste and middle of the night.
"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY!"
It wasn't Sarah calling, but a voice far away out to sea.
"HENDRY WATTY! HENDRY WATTY! send me a line."
My grandfather was wondering what to do, when Sarah speaks down very sharp to him, out of the dark:
"Hendry Watty! Where's the rocket apparatus? Can't you hear the poor fellow asking for a line?"
"I do," says my grandfather, who was beginning to lose his temper; "and do you think, ma'am, that I carry a Boxer's rocket in my trousers pocket?"
"I think you have a ball of worsted in your hand," says she. "Throw it as far as you can."
So my grandfather threw the ball out into the dead waste and middle of the night. He didn't see where it pitched, or how far it went.