Wide Courses | Page 2

good--said so to me, anyway. It is true--but that came
afterward, like the other talk, and it's not too clear in my mind what
they did say. But he came to me and I liked him. And he liked me,
too ... I think he did. He'd heard of me, he said, and would I examine
his yacht--the Rameses that was--to see if any damage had been
done--she'd grounded comin' in by Romer Shoal the day before.

There'd be too much delay to put her in dry dock, and he wanted to sail
soon's could be--if she was sound--on her regular winter West India
cruise. 'Twas in January, a fine clear day, and I said, all right, I'd send
my oldest boy down and look at her. My oldest boy--but you know him?
Aye, a grand lad. Both grand lads. Modelled off their mother, the pair
of them. If I'd only a daughter like her ... the woman she was! A wife
for a seafarin' man. "Watch and watch I've stood wi' ye," she said,
goin'--"watch and watch, but I'm no good to see the lights nor to grip
the wheel longer. The sight's gone and the strength, Matt. Watchmate,
bunkmate, and shipmate I've been to ye, but ye're in smooth water
now ... and no longer ye'll need me." A daughter to stand by you she'd
be. All my money I'd give for one such.
And while he was in the office She came in. "Ah-h!" he said--and then,
"Your daughter, captain?" I said, "No--my wife," maybe o'er-proudly. I
was not ashamed of my years, for it's not years but age--leastwise so I'd
always held--that sets a man back. Those lads of twenty-five or thirty, I
could wear them down like chalk whetstones. Maybe she heard--I don't
know; but she didn't let on she did. My proud days those were--my
office in the big building by the Battery. You remember? Aye, a grand
place--the name in fine letters on the door, and on the window the
picture of my big wreckin'-tug, the best-geared afloat and cost the
most--a sailor's fortune just in her--yes--and I'd named it for Her. And
'twas to that same office I used often to come straight from my rough
seawork. She used to come there to take me to drive. Me, who'd been a
castaway sailor-boy--but I could afford all these things then. I could
afford anything She wanted. And She wanted the fine office, and so it
was fitted up with fine desks and clerks, though it wasn't what the
clerks put in their account-books that kept my business goin'. There
were those who said that I'd pay the price some day for tryin' to carry
so many things in my head, but small heed I paid to them--and 'twasn't
in those days my memory dimmed.
There was but little damage to the yacht's bottom--a small matter to
find that out--though the skipper he carried was no master of craft. So
many of them like that, too. To face the sea like men is not what they're
after, not to take winter or summer as it comes, rough or
smooth--no--but always the smooth water and soft winds. But he did
not sail for the West Indies that day, nor that week, nor

winter--something'd gone wrong with the machinery. No concern of
mine that. There were those who said later--but that was when my head
begun to trouble me--as it does now sometimes, as I said. There was a
time, when Sarah was alive, before we had even the old ship's cabin on
the end of the old dock by way of an office, when I carried my business
in a wallet in my breast pocket--that is, what we didn't carry in our
heads--but the mother of those two lads, she was with me then. That's
long ago.
A most interestin' man he was. As I say, he made no West India cruise
that winter--the machinery kept gettin' out of order--but he made a few
trips with me--wreckin' trips--for I still looked after the big jobs myself.
There were those who used to say that if I'd only learned to stand by
and look on long enough to train a good man to take my place in the
deep divin', that I'd be goin' yet. Maybe so, but maybe, too, they didn't
know it all. I'd yet to meet a man who would do my work half as well
as I could myself--never but one, and she was a woman and could do
her part better--Sarah, my first wife, and her kind aren't livin' now.
He was not so soft, this yacht man, as I used to think. He stood the
rough winter trips with me well. I learned to like him--rarely. I could
talk to him