"'Haved hisself like a trump, sir. Him and me got all the big uns; and it's no joke ketching your first conger, as p'r'aps you know." CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. A CORNISH GALE; AND DICK TEMPLE TAKES HIS FIRST LESSON IN WIND. It can rain in Cornwall, and when it does rain it rains with all its might. The same remark applies to the wind, which blows with all its might sometimes from the west and south-west. A few days had elapsed since the conger-fishing trip, and it had been arranged with Uncle Abram, who had expressed himself as being highly honoured by a visit from Mr Temple that Josh and Will should be ready with the boat for a long row to three or four of the old mine-shafts and creeks of the bay, where Mr Temple intended making a few investigations, and taking specimens of the different ores. But when Dick rose, as he thought at daybreak, he found that it was half-past seven, that the rain was streaming down, and that the wind kept striking the side of the house, as it came from over the great Atlantic, with a noise like thunder. He opened the window, but was glad to shut it again, for the wind snatched it, as it were, from his hand, to send it with a bang against the wall of the house. So shutting it close once more, and giving one of the panes a rub with the towel, he put his nose against it and looked out at the bay. "Oh, how jolly miserable!" he exclaimed. "Here, Taff, hi! Wake up." Taff would not wake up, and a second summons had no effect. In fact the nickname Taff had a bad effect upon Arthur Temple, causing a sort of deafness that was only removed by calling him Arthur. "It rains and it blows, and the sea is one mass of foam. Oh, what waves!" So impressive were these latter that for some time Dick forgot to dress, but kept watching the huge, dark green banks of water come rolling in and then break upon the shore. "Here, what a stupid I am!" he said to himself at last; and hastily scrambling on his clothes, he went down-stairs and out on to the cliff, to be almost startled by the heavy thunder of the great billows that came tumbling in, every now and then one of them coming with a tremendous smack upon the pier, when the whole harbour was deluged, the foam and spray flying over the luggers, which were huddled together, as if in alarm, beneath the shelter of the sea wall. Dick forgot that it was raining heavily, and ran down to the great bed of boulders at the end of the village, where, as the huge waves came in, they drove up the massive stones, which varied in size from that of a man's head to that of a Cheshire cheese, sending them some distance up towards the cliff, and then, as the wave retired, _boomble_--_roomble_--_doomble, doomble_--_doom_, they rolled back again one over the other, as if mockingly defying the retiring wave to come and do that again.