It appeared that the captain of the Spruce was aiming to pass in under the lee of the pier; but a strong current of four or five knots was running between the piles, drifting the steamer away at every attempt as soon as she slowed.  To come in on the other side was dangerous, the hull of the vessel being likely to crash against and overthrow the fragile erection, with damage to herself also.  Flower, who had disappeared for a few minutes, now came back.

’It is just possible I can make ’em hear with the trumpet, now they be to leeward,’ he said, and proceeded with two or three others to grope his way out upon the pier, which consisted simply of a row of rotten piles covered with rotten planking, no balustrade of any kind existing to keep the unwary from tumbling off.  At the water level the piles were eaten away by the action of the sea to about the size of a man’s wrist, and at every fresh influx the whole structure trembled like a spider’s web.  In this lay the danger of making fast, for a strong pull from a headfast rope might drag the erection completely over.  Flower arrived at the end, where a lantern hung.

‘Spruce ahoy!’ he blared through the speaking trumpet two or three times.

There seemed to be a reply of some sort from the steamer.

’Tuesday’s gale hev loosened the pier, Cap’n Ounce; the bollards be too weak to make fast to:  must land in boats if ye will land, but dangerous; yer wife is out of danger, and ‘tis a boy-y-y-y!’

Ethelberta and Picotee were at this time standing on the beach a hundred and fifty yards off.  Whether or not the master of the steamer received the information volunteered by Flower, the two girls saw the triangle of lamps get narrow at its base, reduce themselves to two in a vertical line, then to one, then to darkness.  The Spruce had turned her head from Knollsea.

‘They have gone back, and I shall not have my wedding things after all!’ said Ethelberta.  ‘Well, I must do without them.’

’You see, ‘twas best to play sure,’ said Flower to his comrades, in a tone of complacency.  ’They might have been able to do it, but ’twas risky.  The shop-folk be out of stock, I hear, and the visiting lady up the hill is terribly in want of clothes, so ’tis said.  But what’s that?  Ounce ought to have put back afore.’

Then the lantern which hung at the end of the jetty was taken down, and the darkness enfolded all around from view.  The bay became nothing but a voice, the foam an occasional touch upon the face, the Spruce an imagination, the pier a memory.  Everything lessened upon the senses but one; that was the wind.  It mauled their persons like a hand, and caused every scrap of their raiment to tug westward.  To stand with the face to sea brought semi-suffocation, from the intense pressure of air.

The boatmen retired to their position under the wall, to lounge again in silence.  Conversation was not considered necessary:  their sense of each other’s presence formed a kind of conversation.  Meanwhile Picotee and Ethelberta went up the hill.