sky that could be bought on the quiet was in
use for the deadening or the heightening of emotion. Joe Doane found
himself wishing _he_ had a drink. He'd like to stop thinking about dead
fishermen--and hearing live ones. Everybody had been all strung up for
two days ever since word came from Boston that the _Lillie-Bennie_ was
one of the boats "caught."

They didn't know until the _Lillie-Bennie_ came in that afternoon just
how many of her men she was bringing back with her. They were all out on
Long Wharf to watch her come in and to see who would come ashore--and
who wouldn't. Women were there, and lots of children. Some of these sets
of a woman and children went away with a man, holding on to him and
laughing, or perhaps looking foolish to think they had ever supposed he
could be dead. Others went away as they had come--maybe very still,
maybe crying. There were old men who came away carrying things that had
belonged to sons who weren't coming ashore. It was all a good deal like
a movie--only it didn't rest you.

So he _needed_ sleep, he petulantly told things as he rubbed the back of
his neck, wondered why lounges were made like that, and turned over. But
instead of sleeping, he thought about Joe Cadara. They were friendly
thoughts he had about Joe Cadara; much more friendly than the thoughts
he was having about Ignace Silva. For one thing, Joe wasn't making any
noise. Even when he was alive, Joe had made little noise. He always had
his job on a vessel; he'd come up the Front street in his oilskins, turn
in at his little red house, come out after a while and hoe in his garden
or patch his wood-shed, sit out on the wharf and listen to what Ignace
Silva and other loud-mouthed Portuguese had to say--back to his little
red house. He--well, he was a good deal like the sea. It came in, it
went out. On Joe Cadara's last trip in, Joe Doane met him just as he was
starting out. "Well, Joe," says Joe Doane, "off again?" "Off again,"
said Joe Cadara, and that was about all there seemed to be to it. He
could see him going down the street--short, stocky, slow, _dumb_. By
dumb he meant--oh, dumb like the sea was dumb--just going on doing it.
And now--

All of a sudden he couldn't _stand_ Ignace Silva. "_Hell!_" roared Joe
Doane from the window, "don't you know a man's _dead_?" In an instant
the only thing you could hear was the sea. In--Out--

Then he went back to his bedroom. "I'm not sleeping either," said his
wife--the way pe