Scattered far apart, three English ships are striving to make headway against the freshening gale that blows from the east, and at every fresh gust strains their almost close-reefed canvas as if to blow it out of the bolt-ropes; and seizing their ponderous spars, their intricate top-hamper and heavy-towering poops, every moment careens them over to leeward. Hardly they beat, and bravely too; for a foreign, and it may be a hostile shore is lying with all its rocky terrors on their lee, for these ships are the _Harry_, the _Cressi_, and _White Rose_. They dared not signal for pilots as they passed the little fisher towns that nestle in the creeks and crannies of that tremendous coast, which rises like a wall of rock along the northern sea; and if they had fired guns and shown their colours, it may be doubted whether a pilot could have come off in such tempestuous weather "It freshens fast, this plaguey breeze," said John o'Lynne, turning his weather-beaten face to windward; "but ere this I have weathered many a tough Levanter, and seen St. Elmo's light lay the spirit of the storm, as it burned blue for half a fathom or so below our maintruck, and along the topsail-yard." "Ay, John," responded Howard, "thou mayst have been all round the world, and outside it too--yea, have doubled the Cape of Storms, and yet never have seen a more dangerous or damnable coast than this of Buchan here!" "Should we not take a reef in that foresail and the maintopsail?" "Nay--ouf! what a mouthful of salt water!--nay, stand on; see, the rocks fall back and the land opens! Ho!--St. George for England! we may yet get into safe riding, and thank God and St. Mary we have neither started tack or sheet." "Or had aught carried away from truck to keel--from sprit-sail to poop-lantern." "A board of the forechain-plates hath been torn off; but we will plank it anew in Scottish fir," said Howard, with a smile. "The old _Harry_ hath carried her canvas and shipped her seas most nobly; she is the most manageable craft 'tween Thames and Humber, and though we have not a dry hammock or doublet on board, we will be all right and ataunto ere long. Will Selby, pass the word forward for a posset of sack, and then wear the ship round, John o'Lynne, for that bight on the lee bow opens fast; and though I never was but once in these seas before, I remember me of finding safe anchorage hereabout. Get ready a culverin, as a signal to our craft to windward, and run up St. George's cross, but for a minute only; lest the gimlet eyes of some wary Scots may espy it from yonder devilish bluff, as we wear ship and make to port." "I hear a strange sound," said Dick Selby, putting a tarry hand behind his red, weatherbeaten ear. "'Tis the storm fiend laughing," said John o'Lynne.