"You can go, Jack; besides, you will be in early anyhow. We will do the tarring without you." CHAPTER II. CAUGHT BY THE TIDE. JACK ran home. "I thought you would have been in by two o'clock, Jack," his mother said reproachfully, "so as to see Lily before she went off to school again." "So I should have done, mother, but I had to stick at the work until we had finished up to the water-line. Uncle Ben thought it was not worth while knocking off." Jack's meal of bread and bacon was soon finished, then he waited a little until Lily had returned from school. "Come on, Lil," he said, "I have been waiting to take you out with me." "Be in by six," Mrs. Robson said. "All right, mother! We are only just going down to the shore." Near the little coast-guard station they came upon Bill Corbett. "Can you come to-morrow, Jack?" "Yes; uncle has agreed to do without me. What time are you going to start?" "We will go out as late as we can, Jack. We can get down the creek till three anyhow, so at three o'clock you be ready down here." "Joe is going, I suppose?" "Oh, yes, he does to carry the cockles to the boat while we scrape them out. That is a nice bawley, that new one there; she only came in this tide. That is the boat Tom Parker has had built at Brightlingsea. He expects she is going to beat the fleet. She will want to be a rare good one if she does, and I don't think Tom is the man to get the most out of her anyhow." "I don't reckon he is," Jack agreed. "He would never have bought that boat out of his own earnings, that is certain. It is lucky for him his uncle in town died and left him four hundred pounds. He is one of the lazy ones, he is. Half the times he never goes out at all. It is either too rough, or there ain't wind enough, or he don't think it is a likely day for fish. His mother will do a sight better now that he has got a boat of his own, and she will get someone else to work hers. I should not like to work on shares with him though he has got a new boat and gear." "Well, I must be going," Bill said. "Shall I knock at your door as I pass in the morning?" "You will find me there as the clock strikes three, Bill; but if I ain't, you knock." Bill Corbett, who was a lad some two years older than Jack, strolled away. Jack and Lily sat down on the sloping stage from which the coast-guardsmen launched their boats, and began to chat to the man standing with a telescope under his arm at the door of the boat-shed. Jack was very fond of talking to the coast-guardsmen. They had not, like the fishermen, spent all their lives between Gravesend and Harwich, but had sailed with big ships and been to foreign parts. One of them had been in the China War, another had fought in India with Peel's Naval Brigade, had helped batter down the palace fortresses of Lucknow, and when in the humour they had plenty of tales of stirring incident to relate.