‘Late one evening I was on Look-out Hill, when I hears a footstep and sees Mr. Harris. He stands staring out to sea, and presently up pops Lundy Light and twinks and goes out, and pops up and twinks and goes out again.
‘“When I sees that light,” says Mr. Harris at last, “I thinks she is beckoning me”; and from the sound o’ his voice I guessed he were near crying.
‘“It is not the fust time a queasy stomach have kept loving hearts apart,” says I, wishing to comfort him.
‘“Love against stomach,” he says very bitter, and walks away without saying good night.
‘The fine weather held well into October that year, sir; then one night there come the wust blow known in these parts. It blew hurricane hard from the nor’-west on a big spring flood. The watter come right up the streets and flooded the houses. The whole place were in an uproar. And to make things wuss, about midnight, when the storm were at its height, the lifeboat rocket was fired. A big ship were ashore on Lundy.’
‘I heard of that gale,’ I said; ‘a barge was put over the sea-wall at Instow.’
‘That’s right, sir. Well, you knows the rule about the lifeboat, fust come fust served. They that gets there fust goes. I grabs my oilies and runs. Me and Tom Jenkyns get there amongst the fust. Old Batten, the cox’un, gives us our cork jackets. ’Twas pitchy dark. There was no lights but the hurricane lamps and rope flares, and they kept blowing out. You couldn’t hear yourself speak for the wind and watter. What was done were done dumb show, and the boys and people all yelling and shouting.
‘We mans the boat. She was on her cradle and Batten were just giving the word to let go, when who should come shoving and pushing through the crowd but Mr. Harris. Tom and me was in the bows, and he spies us and clasps his ’ands.
‘“Take me, take me,” he cries, and stretches up to us.
‘Someone gives him a hoist up, and I grabs him, and pulls him in. I don’t think Cap’n Batten see’d him till it were too late, what with the wind and watter and blowing about of the lights, and general confusion. And at that very moment the boat goes down the ways like a rocket, and if Mr. Harris ’ad been half a minute later she’d ha’ been over him. And that would have been the end o’ his troubles for good and all.