t DEAD MEN'S CRAFT 55 



there, along the beach. Their faded paint is of 

 colours favourite long ago, and it is laid on as 

 they used to do then. Deep-keeled, beamy, and 

 high in the gunwale, their unwieldiness was no 

 drawback at a time when by day or through the 

 night there was plenty of help on the beach, before 

 fishermen began looking out after softer jabs on 

 land, for themselves and for their children. There 

 was space to move about In those old boats. That 

 was the reward of men who could handle cross- 

 handed their long heavy oars, instead of the spoon- 

 bladed paddles which have since come into use. 

 Though a few of them were so proudly built that 

 they are as clean in their lines now as when they 

 left the shipwright's yard, the greater number are 

 in outline shaky and broken, like old buildings 

 drawn by bad artists who in that way only 

 can convey a notion of antiquity. Among the 

 varnished gigs, punts, skiffs, and dinghies of 

 to-day, the old boats are simply — old boats. 

 Dead men's names remain on some of them. 



When the clouds called woolpacks have 

 gathered up in the sou'western sky, and gulls are 

 screaming over the house-tops, and a ground-swell, 

 ambling shorewards, already heralds wild weather; 

 and when, too, the Meteorological Office (but so it 



