“Then, sir, I cotched ear o’ the skipper singin’ out from below. Seemed so far down when my eyes dropped that my fingers digged theirselves deep in the moss and clawed around for better grip. They isn’t no beach below, sir, nor broken rock, as you knows; the cliffs rise from deep water. Skipper and crew was on the ice; an’ I seed that the wind had blowed the pans off shore. Wind was up now: blowin’ clean t’ sea, with flakes o’ snow swirlin’ in the lee o’ the cliff. It fair scraped the moss I was lyin’ on. Seemed t’ me, sir, that if it blowed much higher I’d need my toes for hangin’ on. A gust cotched off my cap an’ swep’ it over the sea. Lord! it made me shiver t’ watch the course o’ that ol’ cloth cap! Blow? Oh, ay—blowin’‘! An’ I ’lowed that the skipper was nervous in the wind. He sung out again, waved his arms, pointed t’ the sea, an’ then ducked his head, tucked in his elbows, an’ put off for the schooner, with the crew scurryin’ like weak-flippered swile in his wake. Sort o’ made me laugh, sir; they looked so round an’ squat an’ short-legged, ’way down below, sprawlin’ over the ice in mad haste t’ board the _Billy Boy_ afore she drifted off in the gale. Laugh? Ay, sir! I laughed. Didn’t seem t’ me, sir, that Jim Tool really _meant_ t’ kill Archibald Shott. Jus’ seemed, somehow, like a rough game, with somebody like t’ get hurted if they kep’ it up. So I laughed; but I gulped that laugh back t’ my stomach, sir, when I slapped eyes again on Archibald Shott! “‘Don’t do that, Arch,’ says I. ‘You’ll _fall_!’ “‘Well,’ says he, ‘Jim says I can’t kick un in the head.’ “‘No more you can,’ says Jim; ‘an’ you dassn’t try.’