III.
Next day the crier was crying: “Great meeting—Manx fishermen—on Zigzag at Peel when boats come in to-morrow morning—protest agen harbour taxes.”
“The thing itself,” thought Pete, with his hand pressed hard on the outside of his breast-pocket. At five o'clock in the afternoon he went down to the harbour, where his Nickey lay by the quay, shouted to the master, “Take an odd man tonight, Mr. Kemish?” then dropped to the deck and helped to fetch the boat into the bay.
They had to haul her out by poles alone the quay wall, for the tide was low, and there was no breakwater. It was still early in the herring season, but the fishing was in full swing. Five hundred boats from all parts were making for the fishing round. It lay off the south-west tail of the island. Before Pete's boat reached it the fleet were sitting together, like a flight of sea-fowl, and the sun was almost gone.
The sun went down that night over the hills of Mourne very angry and red in its setting; the sky to the north-west was dark and sullen; the round line of the sea was bleared and broken, but there was little wind, and the water was quiet.
“Bring to and shoot,” cried Pete, and they dropped sail to the landward of the fleet, off the shoulder of the Calf Island, with its two lights making one. The boat was brought head to the wind, with the flowing tide veering against her; the nets were shot over the starboard quarter, and they dropped astern; the bow was swung round to the line of the floating mollags, and boat and nets began to drift together.
Supper was served, the pump was worked, the lights were run up, the small boat was sent round with a flare to fright away the evil spirits, and then the night came down—a dark night, without moon or stars, shutting out the island, though it stood so near, and even the rocks of the Hen and Chicken. The first man for the look-out took up his one hour's watch at the helm, and the rest went below.
Pete's bunk was under the binnacle, and the light of its lamp fell on a stamped envelope which he took out of his breast-pocket from time to time that he might read the inscription. It ran—
Capn Peatr Quilliam,
Lm Cottig Ramsey I O Man.