Blodwen Gruffydd saw the return first, if, indeed, that vague speck lost in the grey combings were they. Again the wave came on, and another hideous range lifted its grey ridge.... By a miracle, it boiled far away to right and left, but rolled, a grey-dappled dead weight, under the boat. Already half a dozen men with a rope were waist-deep in the water....
Then, as the boat crawled on its oars like an insect, another crest rose, tilted them so that man fell on man, and a man came out....
They at the rope were swept out by the backwash to meet them....
And after all, they had come back empty-handed. They had seen neither ship nor boat.
But (and this, in this tale of Llanyglo and of those who made it and were made by it, is the point), an hour later Dafydd Dafis, opening his eyes for the first time since he had been hauled out of the water, said something in Welsh to John Pritchard, who bent over him. Translated it ran:
"I would not pull that one's house down."
Then he closed his eyes again.
As far as the Hafod Unos was concerned, Mr. Tudor Williams's visit now seemed superfluous.