'Oh, tut!' he cried; 'it is not for a clergyman any more than for a seaman to be afraid of weather. I fear there'll be a call for you, Tregarthen. I thought I would look round--I have finished my sermon for to-morrow morning.' And thus talking in a disjointed way while he pulled off his topcoat, he entered the parlour. After warming himself and exchanging a few sentences with my mother about the weather, he began to talk about the barque. 'Hark to that, now!' he cried, as the wind struck the front of the house with a crash that had something of the weight of a great sea in the sound of it, while you heard it in a roar of thunder overhead, charged always with an echo of pouring waters; 'what chain cables wrought by mortal skill are going to hold a vessel in the eye of all this?' 'What business have they to come here?' cried my mother. 'I met young Beckerley just now,' continued Mr. Trembath, 'and he tells me that there's some talk among our men of there having been a mutiny aboard that Dane.' 'Nothing was said to me about that,' I said. 'Beckerley was in the boat's crew that boarded her,' he went on. 'Probably he imagined a mutiny--misinterpreted a gloomy look among the Danes into an air of revolt. Anyway, nothing short of a mutiny should justify a master in anchoring in such a roadstead as this, in the face of the ugliest sky I ever saw in my life.' 'They told me the master was below, ill and helpless,' said I. He went to the window and parted the curtains to peer through, but the wet ran down the glass, and it was like straining the gaze against a wall of ebony. 'You see,' he continued, coming back to his chair, 'the vessel has those deadly rocks right under her stern, and even if her cables don't part, it is impossible to suppose that she will not drag and be on to them in the blackness, perhaps without her people guessing at their neighbourhood until she touches--and then, God help them!' 'I suppose Pentreath,' exclaimed my mother, naming the second coxswain of the lifeboat, 'is keeping a look-out?' 'We need not doubt it,' I answered. 'As to her dragging,' said I, addressing Mr. Trembath, 'the Danes are as good sailors as the English, and understand their business; and, mutiny or no mutiny, those fellows down there are not going to take whatever may come without a shrewd guess at it, and outcry enough when it happens. They'll know fast enough if their vessel is dragging; then a flare will follow, and out we shall have to go, of course.' 'We!' said he significantly, looking from me to my mother. 'You'll not venture to-night, I hope, Tregarthen.' 'If the call comes, most certainly I shall,' said I, flushing up, but without venturing to send a glance at my mother. 'I have appointed myself captain of my men, and is it for _me_, of all my boat's crew, to shirk my duty in an hour of extremity? Let such a thing happen, and I vow to Heaven I could not show my face in Tintrenale again.' Mr. Trembath seemed a little abashed.