“‘On the grounds?’ Lads,” said Tumm to the crew, his voice falling, “_you_ knows what that means, doesn’t you?” * * * * * The Jug Cove fishing-grounds lie off Breakheart Head. They are beset with peril and all the mysteries of the earth. They are fished from little punts, which the men of Jug Cove cleverly make with their own hands, every man his own punt, having been taught to this by their fathers, who learned of the fathers before them, out of the knowledge which ancient contention with the wiles of the wind and of the sea had disclosed. The timber is from the wilderness, taken at leisure; the iron and hemp are from the far-off southern world, which is to the men of the place like a grandmother’s tale, loved and incredible. Off the Head the sea is spread with rock and shallow. It is a sea of wondrously changing colors—blue, red as blood, gray, black with the night. It is a sea of changing moods: of swift, unprovoked wrath; of unsought and surprising gentlenesses. It is not to be understood. There is no mastery of it to be won. It gives no accounting to men. It has no feeling. The shore is bare and stolid. Black cliffs rise from the water; they are forever white at the base with the fret of the sea. Inland, the blue-black hills lift their heads; they are unknown to the folk—hills of fear, remote and cruel. Seaward, fogs and winds are bred; the misty distances are vast and mysterious, wherein are the great cliffs of the world’s edge. Winds and fogs and ice are loose and passionate upon the waters. Overhead is the high, wide sky, its appalling immensity revealed from the rim to the rim. Clouds, white and black, crimson and gold, fluffy, torn to shreds, wing restlessly from nowhere to nowhere. It is a vast, silent, restless place. At night its infinite spaces are alight with the dread marvel of stars. The universe is voiceless and indifferent. It has no purpose—save to follow its inscrutable will. Sea and wind are aimless. The land is dumb, self-centred; it has neither message nor care for its children. And from dawn to dark the punts of Jug Cove float in the midst of these terrors. * * * * *