I saw that it comforted my mother to have Mr. Trembath with her, and when he offered to go I begged him to stop and sup with us, and he consented. It was not a time when conversation would flow very easily. The noise of the gale alone was subduing enough, and to this was to be added the restlessness of expectation, the conviction in my own heart that sooner or later the call must come; and every moment that I talked--putting on as cheerful a face as I could assume--I was waiting for it. I constantly went to the window to look out, guessing that if they burnt a flare aboard the barque the torch-like flame of it would show through the weeping glass; and shortly before supper was served--that is to say, within a few minutes of nine o'clock--I left the parlour, and going to a room at the extremity of the passage, where I kept my sea-going clothes, I pulled on a pair of stout fisherman's stockings, and over them the sea-boots I always wore when I went in the lifeboat. I then brought away my monkey-jacket and oilskins and sou'-wester, and hung them in the passage ready to snatch at; for a summons to man the boat always meant hurry--there was no time for hunting; indeed, if the call found the men in bed, their custom was to dress as they ran. Thus prepared, I returned to the parlour. Mr. Trembath ran his eye over me, but my mother apparently took no notice. A cheerful fire blazed in the grate. The table was hospitable with damask and crystal; the play of the flames set the shadows dancing upon the ceiling that lay in the gloom of the shade over the lamp. There was something in the figure of my old mother, with her white hair and black silk gown and antique gold chain about her neck, that wonderfully fitted that homely interior, warm with the hues of the coal-fire, and cheerful with pictures and with several curiosities of shield and spear, of stuffed bird and Chinese ivory ornament, gathered together by my father in the course of many voyages. Mr. Trembath looked a plump and rosy and comfortable man as he took his seat at the table, yet there was an expression of sympathetic anxiety upon his face, and frequently I would catch him quietly hearkening, and then he would turn involuntarily to the curtained window, so that it was easy to see in what direction his thoughts went. 'One had need to build strongly in this part of the country,' said he, as we exchanged glances at the sound of a sudden driving roar of wind--a squall of wet of almost hurricane power--to which the immensely strong fabric of our house trembled as though a heavy battery of cannon were being dragged along the open road opposite, 'for, upon my word, Hugh,' said he--we were old friends, and he would as often as not give me my Christian name--'if the Dane hasn't begun to drag as yet, there should be good hope of her holding on throughout what may still be coming. Surely, for two hours now past her ground-tackle must have been very heavily tested.'