From the cross-roads, and the public-house, and the licensed head-quarters of pepper and snuff, and the loop-hole where a sheep had been known to hang, in times of better trade, but never could dream of hanging now; also from the window of the man who had had a hundred heads (superior to his own) shaken at him because he set up for making breeches in opposition to the women, and showed a few patterns of what he could do if any man of legs would trade with him--from all these head-centres of intelligence, and others not so prominent but equally potent, into the very smallest hole it went (like the thrill in a troublesome tooth) that here was a chance come of feeding, a chance at last of feeding.

For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman, weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop.

And this was on St.
Swithin's Eve.
There was nothing to be done that night, of course, for mackerel must be delicately worked; but long before the sun arose, all Flamborough, able to put leg in front of leg, and some who could not yet do that, gathered together where the land-hold was, above the incline for the launching of the boats.

Here was a medley, not of fisher-folk alone, and all their bodily belongings, but also of the thousand things that have no soul, and get kicked about and sworn at much because they can not answer.
Rollers, buoys, nets, kegs, swabs, fenders, blocks, buckets, kedges, corks, buckie-pots, oars, poppies, tillers, sprits, gaffs, and every kind of gear (more than Theocritus himself could tell) lay about, and rolled about, and upset their own masters, here and there and everywhere, upon this half acre of slip and stumble, at the top of the boat channel down to the sea, and in the faint rivalry of three vague lights, all making darkness visible.
For very ancient lanterns, with a gentle horny glimmer, and loop-holes of large exaggeration at the top, were casting upon anything quite within their reach a general idea of the crinkled tin that framed them, and a shuffle of inconstant shadows, but refused to shed any light on friend or stranger, or clear up suspicions, more than three yards off.
In rivalry with these appeared the pale disk of the moon, just setting over the western highlands, and "drawing straws" through summer haze; while away in the northeast over the sea, a slender irregular wisp of gray, so weak that it seemed as if it were being blown away, betokened the intention of the sun to restore clear ideas of number and of figure by-and-by.

But little did anybody heed such things; every one ran against everybody else, and all was eagerness, haste, and bustle for the first great launch of the Flamborough boats, all of which must be taken in order.
But when they laid hold of the boat No.