is,
first of all, "ye'll remember--will ye not?--for your guidance an'
comfort, that 'tis not a tie o' blood betwixt you an' ol' Nick Top.
He's no kin t' shame ye: he's on'y a chance acquaintance."

The tale began at the waning of the evening glory....

* * * * *

"Your father an' me, lad," said my uncle, "was shipmates aboard the
_Will-o'-the-Wisp_ when she was cast away in a nor'east gale on the
Devil's Teeth, near twenty year ago: him bein' the master an' me but a
hand aboard. How old is you now, Dannie? Nineteen? Well, well! You was
but six months come from above, lad, when that big wind blowed your
father's soul t' hell; an' your poor mother was but six months laid
away. We was bound up from the Labrador that night, with a cargo o'
dry fish, picked up 'long shore in haste, t' fill out a foreign bark
at Twillingate. 'Twas late in the fall o' the year, snow in the wind,
the sea heapin' up in mountains, an' the night as black as a wolf's
throat. Your father was crowdin' on, Dannie, in the way he had, bein'
a wonderful driver, an' I 'lowed he was fetchin' too close t' the
Harborless Shore for safety; but I wouldn't tell un so, lad, for I
didn't know un so well as I knows you, bein' on'y a hand aboard, ye
see, with a word or two t' le'ward of what ye might call a speakin'
acquaintance with the skipper. I 'lowed he'd strike the Rattler; but
he cleared the Rattler, by good luck, an' fetched up at dawn on the
Devil's Teeth, a mean, low reef o' them parts, where the poor
_Will-o'-the-Wisp_ broke her back an' went on in splinters with the
sea an' wind. 'Twas over soon, Dannie; 'twas all over soon, by
kindness o' Providence: the ol' craft went t' pieces an' was swep' on
t' le'ward by the big black waves."

In the pause my uncle's hand again searched the low table for the
glass that was not there.

"I'm not wantin' t' tell ye," he muttered.

I would not beg him to stop.

"Me an' your father, Dannie," he continued, presently, dwelling upon
the quiet sunset, now flaring with the last of its fire, "somehow
cotched a grip o' the rock. 'Twas a mean reef t' be cast away on, with
no dry part upon it: 'twas near flush with the sea, an' flat an' broad
an' jagged, slimy with sea-weed; an' 'twas washed over by the big
seas, an' swam in the low roll o' the black ones. I 'low, Dannie, that
I was never afore cotched in such a swirl an' noise o' waters. 'Twas
wonderful--the thunder an' spume