ber how I stood on the steps of
John Snow's house and looked down the slope of the hill, and below the
hill to the harbor, and beyond the harbor to clear water. It was a cold
winter moonlight, and under the moon the sea heaved and heaved and
heaved. There was no break in the surface of that sea that night, but as
it heaved, terribly slow and heavy, I thought I could feel the steps
beneath me heaving with it.

III

All that night I walked the streets and roads of Cape Ann, walking where
my eyes would lose no sight of that sea to which I had been born, and
thinking, thinking, thinking always to the surge and roar of it; and in
the morning I went down to where Hugh Glynn's vessel lay in dock; and
Hugh Glynn himself I found standing on the string-piece, holding by the
hand and feeding candy to the little son of one of his crew, the while
half a dozen men were asking him, one after the other, for what I, too,
had come to ask.

My turn came. "I never met you to speak to before, Captain Glynn," I
began, "but I was a friend of Arthur Snow's, and I was hopeful for the
chance to ship with you in Arthur's place."

"My name is Simon Kippen," I went on, when he made no answer. "I was in
John Snow's kitchen when you came in last night."

"I know"--he waved the hand that wasn't holding the little boy--"I know.
And"--he almost smiled--"you're not afraid to come to sea with me?"

"Why more afraid," I said, "than you to take me with you?"

"You were a great friend of Arthur's?"

"A friend to Arthur--and more if I could," I answered.

He had a way of throwing his head back and letting his eyes look out, as
from a distance, or as if he would take the measure of a man. 'Twas so
he looked out at me now.

"He's a hard case of a man, shouldn't you say, Simon Kippen, who would
play a shipmate foul?"

I said nothing to that.

"And, master or hand, we're surely all shipmates," he added; to which
again I said nothing.

"Will you take Saul Haverick for dory mate?" he said again.

"I bear Saul Haverick no great love," I said; "but I have never heard he
wasn't a good fisherman, and who should ask more than that of his mate
in a dory?"

He looked out at me once more from the eyes that seemed so far back in
his head; and from me he looked to the flag that was still to the
half-mast of his vessel for the loss of Arthur Snow.

"We might ask something more in a dory mate at times, but he is a good
fisherman," he answered at la