"Thank yu. I don't use tobacco. Yu'd better keep thic donation. They'd ha' catched their death o' cold there all night, an' there ain't no other boats down here along, nor won't be. That's what they reckons their bloody lives be worth, an' that's what the lives of the likes o' they _be_ worth, tu! Dreepence! My senses...." We roared with laughter. It put heart into us for our stiff row home against wind, wave and tide. When I went for'ard to place the cut-rope ready, Uncle Jake had to call me aft again: spite of his strength the boat was being beaten to leeward. It was nearly four o'clock when we had hauled up and were carrying the winkles on our backs down one of the untidy little roadways into Under Town. No dinner or high-tea was waiting for Uncle Jake. The house was unswept. How draggled the little bits of fern in the old china pots looked! The fire was out; the hearth piled up with ashes; and on the table stood a basin of potatoes in water, most of them unpeeled. Uncle Jake came to a standstill, acutely alive in the midst of a domestic deadness. He raised himself upright beneath his load of winkles. "That's what I got to put up wi'," he said. "An't had a bite since breakfast at four by the clock this morning, 'cept thic sandwich o' yours. Tis a wonder how I du put up wi' it. I don' know for sure." [Sidenote: _MEASURING UP_] "Thees is what I got to put up wi'!" he repeated when Mrs Jake came in from a neighbour's. "I forgot," she said with a gay high-pitched little laugh which had in it a tang of acquiescent despair--the echo of a mind that has ceased fighting anything, even itself. "Forgot! Yu forgets!" Then in a softer tone: "Gie us the quart cup." He emptied my winkles out upon the stone floor, knelt down, and measured them back into the ballast-bag: "one--two--three--four, that's one--five--six--seven--eight, that's two pecks--nine--ten--half a peck over; good for you, skipper!" He had four pecks himself, together with several small lobsters which he threw out to me. "But you'll eat those...." "No, I shan't. Don't want 'em. Take 'em in home for yer tay." Then he hunted out of an inside breast-pocket a screw of newspaper, and from it took a half-crown piece: "That's your share." "But...." "Go on! If you hadn' a-come I should ha' been the poorer by more'n that, an' that's what one o' they beery bladderheads would ha' had if they'd a-come--on'y I won't hae 'em 'long wi' me. Better yu to hae it than one o' they, to gie to the brewer. I wishes 'ee to take it. Yu've earned it, an' thank yu for your help. _I_ done all right out o'it." 26