The Secret in the Hill by Bernard Capes — Read

You remember old Jacob? 'Twas he seconded Harry so unhandsomely in the great fight. He had retired upon his savings now, and did no work, save when a still night persuaded him forth with line and trawling-net, and the loan of a friend's boat could be procured. Such had been the case when we ran across him. He had taken advantage of the holiday spirit, which kept all "afternoon farmers" of the sea scrupulously away from it, to pull a few miles out in a borrowed craft, and try for a basket of fish to make a welcome garnish to his Christmas pot.

He was lying, when he picked us up, off the banks some four miles from land in a southerly direction, and in a few minutes was to have hauled in and returned home. By so narrow a margin of Providence were we acquitted. In all these hours, it appeared, we had made no nearer the coast than this; had just swung hither and thither gently, drifting south, on the whole, and making two feet shoreward, perhaps, for every one we retired. Probably, in the end, we should have dropped sluggishly on the banks again, unless the outward race of the tide, more vicious than the inward, had swept us over them. In either case, however, the result would have been the same, I believe. Another hour or two must have seen the finish of our endurance.