Yesterday morning early there was a great excitement along the beach. Drift-boats could be seen in the offing. "I tell thee what 'tis," they said, "the whiting be in an' us chaps an't been out to look for 'em. Us don't du nort nowadays like us used tu." Later on, however, we heard that the Plymouth drifters had been out after an autumn shoal of mackerel, had caught some thousands and had made good prices. The season for mackerel drifting here usually ends with July or August, but good October mackerel, mixed with herring, have occasionally been caught. Tony, John and myself decided to put to sea. When the other boats saw our fleet of nets being hauled aboard (in a furious hurry), they fitted out too. We shoved off just before dark. The wind was strongish WSW.--off land, that is--so that inshore the sea was almost calm, except for the swell running in from outside. What it was like outside the white horses and the wind-streaks showed. Hardly had we gone half a mile before we heard the queer clutching noise which meant that a strong puff of wind had compelled Tony to let the sheet fly. The squall past, he hauled it in again, put his legs across the stern and hung on. We sailed eight miles from land in ten minutes under the hour--speed, that, for a twenty-two-foot open boat with its mainsail reefed! Where we downhauled to shoot the nets, the sea, unsheltered by cliffs and headlands, was--as Tony beautifully put it--'rising all up in heaps.' Whilst I was trying to keep the boat before the wind, for net-shooting, a great comber plopped over the stern right upon my back. The sky was weird. Great wind-drifts of rain-cloud constantly spread out from the west, and wolves, higher up in the sky, were driving across the moon. We heated tea, but did not try to sleep. Tony and John kept up a curious dialogue. "What do 'ee think o' it, then?" "'Tisn't vitty. I said so all along." [Sidenote: _HAULING INBOARD_] "If a skat o' rain comes--and 'tis raining on land, seems so--the wind'll back out to sou'west, an' us'll hae to rin for it. A perty lop'll get up tu, an' we'm more'n a mile from land." "Us'll haul in be 'leven. No gude hanging on out here. If the wind _du_ back...." I have never heard them talk so much about the weather. And all the while, the sky drove into splendid cloud-forms, all windy, nearly all rainy. We lost the Eddystone light, then lost the Seacombe light and recovered the former, as a storm drifted along shore. From time to time we thought the wind was backing a bit. Supper, for me, had to be crammed down on a rather queasy stomach. "We'm all ways to once!" Tony remarked. The wind did definitely back a point or two. "Only let it once die away," said Tony in the tone of _I told you so_; "then yu'll see how it can spring from the sou'west when 'tis a-minded."