“Tidyish, sir, but not bad. She gives a pretty good swish at the face o’ the harbour when the weather’s rough from the south-east, and flies over on to the boats; but Bar Lea Point yonder takes all the rough of it and shelters us like. If the young gent looks down now, he can see Tom Dodder’s Rock.”
Mr Temple looked over the side.
“Yes, here it is, Arthur,” he exclaimed, “about six feet beneath us.”
“Five an’ half at this time o’ the tide,” said Josh correctively.
“Oh! five and a half, is it?” said Mr Temple, smiling. “Can you see, Arthur?”
“Yes, papa,” said the boy, looking quickly over the side and sitting up again as if he did not approve of it. “Do you mean that great rough thing?”
“That’s her,” said Josh. “Tom Dodder, as used to live long ago, wouldn’t keep a good look-out, and he used to say as his boat would ride over any rock as there was on the coast. He went right over that rock to get into the harbour lots of times out of sheer impudence, and to show his mates as he wouldn’t take advice from nobody; but one morning as he was running in, heavy loaded with pilchar’s, after being out all night, and getting the biggest haul ever known, such a haul as they never get nowadays, he was coming right in, and a chap on the pier there shouts to him, ‘luff, Tom, luff! She won’t do it this tide.’ ‘Then she shall jump it,’ says Tom, who wouldn’t luff a bit, but rams his tiller so as to drive right at the rock. You see there was lots o’ room at the sides, but he wouldn’t go one way nor yet the other, out o’ cheek like. He was one o’ these sort of chaps as wouldn’t be helped, you see; and as soon as the lads on the pier heared him say as his boat should jump over the rock—lep it, you know—they began to stare, as if they expected something was coming.”
“And was something coming?” said Dick, who was deeply interested, though he could not help thinking about his brother’s refusal of help.
“Coming! I should think there was, for just as the boat comes up to the rock, she acts just like a Chrishtun dog, or a horse might when her master wanted her to—what does she do but rises at the rock to lep right over her, but the water seemed to fail just then, and down she come sodge!”
“How?” said Arthur, who had become interested, and had not understood the comparison.