sel or other dory in sight.

We said no word to each other of it, but the while we waited further,
all the while with a wind'ard eye to the bad little seas, we talked.

"Did you ever think of dying, Simon?" Hugh Glynn said after a time.

"Can a man follow the winter trawling long and not think of it at
times?" I answered.

"And have you fear of it, Simon?"

"I know I have no love for it," I said. "But do you ever think of it,
you?"

"I do--often. With the double tides working to draw me to it, it would
be queer enough if now and again I did not think of it."

"And have you fear of it?"

"Of not going properly--I have, Simon." And after a little: "And I've
often thought it a pity for a man to go and nothing come of his going.
Would you like the sea for a grave, Simon?"

"I would not," I answered.

"Nor me, Simon. A grand, clean grave, the ocean, and there was a time I
thought I would; but not now. The green grave ashore, with your own
beside you--a man will feel less lonesome, or so I've often thought,
Simon.

"I've often thought so," he went on, his eyes now on watch for the bad
seas and again looking wistful-like at me. "I'd like to lie where my
wife and boy lie, she to one side and the lad to the other, and rise
with them on Judgment Day. I've a notion, Simon, that with them to bear
me up I'd stand afore the Lord with greater courage. For if what some
think is true--that it's those we've loved in this world will have the
right to plead for us in the next--then, Simon, there will be two to
plead for me as few can plead."

He stood up and looked around. "It is a bad sea now, but worse later,
and a strong breeze brewing, Simon"; and drew from an inside pocket of
his woollen shirt a small leather note-book. He held it up for me to
see, with the slim little pencil held by little loops along the edges.

"'Twas hers. I've a pocket put in every woollen shirt I wear to sea so
'twill be close to me. There's things in it she wrote of our little boy.
And I'm writing here something I'd like you to be witness to, Simon."

He wrote a few lines. "There, Simon. I've thought often this trip how
'tis hard on John Snow at his age to have to take to fishing again. If I
hadn't lost Arthur, he wouldn't have to. I'm willing my vessel to John
Snow. Will you witness it, Simon?"

I signed my name below his; and he set the book back in his inside
pocket.

"And you think our time is come, skipper?" I tried to speak quietly,
t