"It's lucky ye didn't go, boy," said Andy, solemnly. "We're watchin' for the boat now. My brother was on her, and two cousins o' my wife. She was a little craft, and a leaky one. We were goin' to patch her up an' make her fit. But we waited too long. An' now----" He drew his rough sleeve across his eyes. The wind howled round their ears and the hail was smiting and stinging as though the storm had a devilish mind to drive them away. "Why don't you go out in a boat and get them?" pleaded Wilf. Andy shook his head. "It ain't that we're afraid," he said. "But there ain't a boat we have here that could ride those waves. The coast-guard tried--and now look!" He pointed to a heap of broken, white-painted timbers lying in the roadway, half-hidden from them by the whooping blizzard that threw its dizzying veils of snow before their eyes. "That's the coast-guard's boat!" exclaimed Andy. "The sea picked her up, she did, and threw her right over the sea-wall as if she was an egg, an' mashed her flat. That shows how much of a chance there'd be for us to get through an' get back, supposin' we could find 'em. No, boy, we've got to wait." "Look!" cried the lad, excitedly. "Please look, Andy. What's that bobbing up and down in the surf?" The fisherman put to his eyes his worn and rusted spy-glass. Then he gritted his teeth and bit his lip. "You stay up here on the road, boy. I got to climb down there and make sure." Wilf stood at the sea-wall. He was barely tall enough to look over it. He watched Andy clamber painfully down over the great rocks piled high against the outer face of the wall. Every now and then a big wave would rise up, a green monster of hissing foam and fury, and throw itself on him like a wild animal trying to scare him back. But men of that breed are not afraid. The stalwart figure, though often knocked down and half drowned, would struggle to his feet again and go on. Wilf saw Andy pick up the--yes, it was a body--and put it on his shoulder, and come staggering toward the rocks. Then he clambered tediously over the stones, and Wilf saw whose body it was that Andy was carrying. It was his boy friend Jim, who had gone out only a few hours before, with the sun on his fair hair, laughing and whistling and shouting his gay farewell. "Be back in a little while, Wilf! Bring you a nice big fish for your supper. You want to have a good hot fire ready to cook it Better change your mind and come along." Never again would he hear that cheery hail of invitation to adventure. Andy laid the little half-frozen figure down, carefully, tenderly, beside the wall. "Too bad!" he said, "too bad! But the sea can be terrible cruel to the sons o' men. I wonder we keep goin' back to her as we do. Now I got to take the poor boy to his mother." He picked up the body, and trudged off into the storm, toward the fishing-huts. Wilf went back to his own house, thinking about the sea and how cruel it had been.