danger; and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun
fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke
the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of
the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and
stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I
wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should rather stand wrecker after
wrecker. There was no emotion, no animation, it scarce seemed any
interest; not a hand was raised; but all callously awaited the
harvest of the sea, and their children stood by their side and
waited also. To the end of his life, my father remembered that
amphitheatre of placid spectators on the beach; and with a special
and natural animosity, the boys of his own age. But presently a
light air sprang up, and filled the sails, and fainted, and filled
them again; and little by little the Regent fetched way against the
swell, and clawed off shore into the turbulent firth.

The purpose of these voyages was to effect a landing on open
beaches or among shelving rocks, not for persons only, but for
coals and food, and the fragile furniture of light-rooms. It was
often impossible. In 1831 I find my grandfather 'hovering for a
week' about the Pentland Skerries for a chance to land; and it was
almost always difficult. Much knack and enterprise were early
developed among the seamen of the service; their management of
boats is to this day a matter of admiration; and I find my
grandfather in his diary depicting the nature of their excellence
in one happily descriptive phrase, when he remarks that Captain
Soutar had landed 'the small stores and nine casks of oil WITH ALL
THE ACTIVITY OF A SMUGGLER.' And it was one thing to land, another
to get on board again. I have here a passage from the diary, where
it seems to have been touch-and-go. 'I landed at Tarbetness, on