But their work only began when they came into Peel. The tide was down; there was no breakwater; the neck of the harbour was narrow, and four hundred boats were coming to take shelter and to land their cargoes. It was a scene of tumult and confusion--shouting, swearing, and fighting among the men, and crushing and cranching among the boats as they nosed their way to the harbour mouth, threw ropes on to the quay, where fifty ropes were round one post already, or cast anchors up the bank of the castle rock, which was steep and dangerous to lie on. Pete got landed somehow, but his Nickey with half the fleet turned tail and went round the island. As he leapt ashore, the helpless harbour-master, who had been bellowing over the babel through a cracked trumpet, turned to him and said, “For the Lord's sake, Capt'n Quilliam, if you've got a friend that can lend us a hand, go off to the meeting at seven o'clock.” “I mane to,” said Pete, but he had something else to do first. It was the task that had brought him to Peel, and no eye must see him do it. Slowly and slyly, like one who does a doubtful thing and pretends to be doing nothing, he went stealing through the town--behind the old Court-house and up Castle Street, into the market-place, and across it to the line of shops which make the principal thoroughfare. At one of these shops, a little single-roomed place, with its small shutter still up, but the door half open and a noise of stamping going on inside, he stopped in a lounging way, half twisting on his heel as if idly looking back. It was the Post-Office. With a stealthy look around, he put a trembling hand into his breast-pocket, drew out the letter, screened it by the flat of his big palm, and posted it. Then he turned hurriedly away, and was gone in a moment, like a man who feared pursuit, down a steep and tortuous alley that led to the shore. The morning was early; the shops were not yet open; only the homes of the fishermen were putting out curling wreaths of smoke; the silent streets echoed to his lightest footstep. But the shore road was busy enough. Fishermen in sea-boots and sou'westers, with oilskin over one arm and a string of herring in the other hand, were trooping from the harbour up to the Zigzag by the rock called the Creg Malin. It was at the end of the bay, where cliff and beach and sea together form a bag like the cod-end of the trawl net. “It's not the fishermen at all--it's the farmers they're thinking of,” said one. “You're right,” said Pete, “and it's some of ourselves that's to blame for it.” “How's that?” said somebody.