“Lizzie Martin--the woman, not the boat--kept the ‘Dotterel.’ She was a pleasant body, plump (when she was twelve or thirteen she had one of these creases round her neck that means a double chin later on), and she was very honest and comfortable and motherly, though she hadn’t a child--just then. About two o’clock three of the gipsies had come into the ‘Dotterel,’--four, if you reckon the babe at the handsome woman’s breast,--and they sat over by the snowed-up window. There would be a dozen or so men round the hearth; but nobody was drinking, and nobody said anything in Lizzie’s presence about what we’d heard of this Osa Couper and the Portsannet boat, you understand. Now and then the child gave a little throaty cry, and once or twice Willie Harverson--he was a young giant, and his curly head always looked too little for his shoulders when he’d got his two or three winter ganseys on,--Willie had told her to bring the child nearer the fire. But she had only shaken her head and pointed behind her at the window. The panes had warmed a little, and the snow had peeled a couple of inches from them and then frozen again. Except for that narrow gleam of cold light, you’d have thought it was evening, for the candles were lighted, and they swealed and guttered every time the door opened. The gipsy woman had opened her breast again,--a sort of sling to carry the babe passed across it,--and she looked straight before her, like a handsome statue, a beautiful animal--like everything, else in nature except this self-conscious creature man.... I can’t tell you; never mind.... “Willie told her again to come near the fire, and then up piped Nunan in his high, eager voice. She’d do there till her man came back from Portsannet, he said (they didn’t seem to doubt that he’d gone out with the boat). I remember Willie muttered, ‘Christ rest his soul for a brave man if ...’ You see, the Portsannet boat was an old Greathead boat, nearly as old as the century, fit for chopping up for kindling any time this five-and-twenty years; but ours at South Ness was a new, thirty-three-foot boat, mahogany, double-banked, self-emptying, self-righting, nearly seven hundred pounds with belts and tackle and carriage. She’d only been out twice, and there wasn’t a scratch on her blue and white. John Broadwood was cox. I knew what John thought of their chances of getting round the Spit if they were to put out; but they were so proud of the new boat that they were eager as lads to try it. Men were watch and watch about down at the boathouse, where they could see if Reuben Ward signalled from the station on the hill; but it wasn’t our day. With the wind due north, if a boat cleared Portsannet Head she cleared the Spit too. It was Portsannet’s turn, and the old boat’s....