ft.
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 about the work, and he'd try to understand--as so few of his
kind would. He understood better after he'd been some trips with me, and
I came to love him--almost. When I was away on those trips, my wife
would be at home--until the time her aunt took sick. I recollect her
speakin' of her aunt--or did I? No matter. She lived out West somewhere,
and didn't want her to marry me--or so I made out. I didn't go too deep
into it. When she hinted that she hadn't told me of her aunt before for
fear of hurtin' my feelin's, it was enough. Women feel things more than
men, and no use to rake 'em over. I knew I was a rough man, not the kind
many women folks might take to--I never quite got over Her likin'
me--nor did a whole lot of people--and 'twas natural a woman of the kind
her aunt must be, didn't like her marryin' a man like me. But no matter;
her aunt was bein' reconciled, she used to write me, and when