St Leonards, old Tom Small was a weekly visitor on Saturday nights, when, in that small, close-smelling bar-parlour, he would hurl the most bitter anathemas at the "All Highest of Germany," and laugh his fleet to scorn; while at Anderby Church each Sunday morning he would appear in his best dark blue trousers, thick blue jacket and peaked cap, a worthy hardworking British fisherman with wrinkled, weatherbeaten face and reddish beard. He was of that hardy type of seafarer so much admired by the town-dweller when on his summer holiday, a man who, in his youth, had been "cox" of the Sutton lifeboat, and who had stirring stories to tell of wild nights around the Rosse Spit and the Sand Haile, the foundering of tramps with all hands, and the marvellous rescues effected by his splendid crew.

It was this man, heavily-booted and deep-voiced, by whom Lewin Rodwell was confronted when he tapped at the cottage door.

"Come, hurry up! Let me in!" cried Rodwell impatiently, after the door was slowly unlocked. "I'm soaked! This infernal neighbourhood of yours is absolutely the limit, Small. Phew!" and he threw down his soaked cap and entered the stone-flagged living-room, where Small's son rose respectfully to greet him.

"Where are my other clothes?" he asked sharply, whereupon the weatherbeaten fisherman produced from an old chest in the corner a rough suit of grey tweeds, which Rodwell carried to the inner room on the left, and quickly assumed.

"Pretty nice weather this!" he shouted cheerily to father and son, while in the act of changing his clothes. "Is all serene? Have you tested lately?"

"Yes, sir," replied the elder man. "I spoke at five o'clock an' told 'em you were coming. So Mr Stendel is waiting."

"Good!" was Rodwell's reply. "Anybody been looking around?"

"Not a soul today, sir. The weather's been bad, an' the only man we've seen is Mr Bennett, from the coastguard station, on his patrol. He was 'ere last night and had a drop o' whisky with us."

"Good?" laughed Rodwell. "Keep well in with the coastguard. They're a fine body, but only a year or so ago the British Admiralty reduced them. It wasn't their fault."

"We do keep in with 'em," was old Tom Small's reply, as Rodwell re-entered the room in dry clothes. "I generally give 'em a bit o' fish when they wants it, and o' course I'm always on the alert looking out for periscopes that don't appear," and 

 Prev. P 45/134 next