So as the stout ship wallowed and plunged at her anchors--head to wind and sea, and everything, from groaning timbers to song of wind-curved rigging and creak of swinging yard, seeming to find a voice in answer to the plunge and wash of the waves, and swirl and patter of flying spray over the high bows--we found what shelter we might under bulwarks and break of fore deck, and waited.
My father and I sat on the steersman's bench aft, not heeding the showers of spray that reached us now and then even there, and we watched the tide rising over the sand banks, and longed for home and warm fireside, instead of this cold, gray sky and the restless waves; though I, at least, was half sorry that the short voyage was over, dreaming of the next and whither we might turn our ship's bows again before the summer ended.
My father looked now and then shoreward, and now seaward, judging wind and tide, and sitting patiently with the wondrous patience of the seaman, learnt in years of tide and calm; for he would tell me that sea learning never ends, so that though the sailor seemed to be idle, he must needs be studying some new turn of his craft if only his eyes were noting how things went around him.

Yet I thought he was silent beyond his wont.
Presently he rose up and paced the deck for a little, and then came and sat down by me again.
"I am restless, son Wulfric," he said, laughing softly; "and I know not why." "For the sake of supper," I answered, "for I am that also, and tide seems mighty slow therefore." "Nay, supper comes to the patient; but it seems to me that I have to watch for somewhat." "Surely for naught but the tide," I answered, not thinking much of the matter, but yet wondering a little.
"Not for tide or wind, but for somewhat new, rather--somewhat of which I have a fear.
"But this is foolishness," he said, laughing again at himself, for few men thought less of signs and forewarnings than he.
Then he looked out again to windward, under his hand, and all of a sudden turned sharply to me, pointing and saying: "But, as I live, hither comes something from the open sea!" I rose up and looked to where he showed me, and as the ship rose to a great wave, far off I saw a dark speck among white-crested rollers, that rose and fell, and came ever nearer, more swiftly than wreckage should.
Now some of the men who clustered under the shelter of the fore deck, with their eyes ever on us, rose up from their places and began to look out seaward over the bows through the spray to find out what we watched, and ere long one man called to his mates: "Ho, comrades, here comes flotsam from the open sea!" Slowly the men rose up one by one and looked, clustering round the stem head, and a little talk went round as to what this might be.
"It is a bit of wreck," said one.
"Hardly, for the gale has not been wild enough to wreck a ship in the open; 'tis maybe lumber washed from a deck," answered another.
"It is a whale--no more or less." "Nay," said old Kenulf; "it behaves not as a whale, and it comes too swiftly for wreckage." "Would it were a dead whale.

Then would be profit," said another man again, and after that the men were silent for a long while, having said all that could be guessed, and watched the speck that drew nearer and nearer, bearing down on us.
At last my father, ever keen of sight, said to me: "This thing is not at the mercy of wind and wave.

Rather has it the rise and fall of a boat well handled.

Yet whence should one come in this heavy sea, after three days' gale ?" Even as he spoke, old Kenulf growled, half to himself, that to his thinking this was a boat coming, and handled, moreover, by men who knew their trade.